The Australian airline Qantas sold tens of thousands of tickets after the corona pandemic, even though some flights had been canceled for weeks. This is now costing the airline dearly: Because of this violation of Australian consumer law, it agreed with the National Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (ACCC) to pay 100 million Australian dollars (61 million euros), as Qantas announced.
An additional 20 million Australian dollars will be used to compensate more than 86,000 affected passengers, who will each receive between 225 and 450 dollars. Most of them were tickets for domestic flights that continued to be traded for days or even weeks even though the connections had been canceled. The ACCC sued the airline with the kangaroo in its logo over these “ghost flights” last year.
“Today marks another important step forward as we work to restore confidence in the national airline,” Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson said. “We admit that Qantas failed its customers and failed to meet its own standards when air travel resumed following the Covid lockdown.” The company is sincerely sorry. Investments have now been made in new technologies “to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again.”
