Yahoo Finance Qantas sued over tickets sold for cancelled flights
The consumer watchdog is suing Qantas for alleged false, misleading or deceptive conduct.
Qantas is being sued for allegedly advertising tickets for more than 8,000 flights it had already cancelled but not removed from sale.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) launched action in the Federal Court against the Aussie airline today, alleging it engaged in “false, misleading or deceptive conduct”.
The consumer watchdog claims Qantas kept selling tickets for the flights - scheduled to depart between May and July 2022 - for an average of more than two weeks and, in some cases, for up to 47 days after they had already been cancelled.
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The ACCC also alleges Qantas failed to notify existing ticketholders their flights had been cancelled - for 18 days, on average, and up to 48 days - for more than 10,000 flights scheduled to depart in May to July 2022.
ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said the proceedings followed a “detailed investigation” into Qantas’s flight-cancellation practices, with tens of thousands of people likely affected by the conduct.
“We allege that Qantas’s conduct in continuing to sell tickets to cancelled flights, and not updating ticket holders about cancelled flights, left customers with less time to make alternative arrangements and may have led to them paying higher prices to fly at a particular time not knowing that flight had already been cancelled,” Cass-Gottlieb said.
1 in 4 flights cancelled
The ACCC’s investigation found Qantas cancelled almost one in four flights in the period from May to July 2022, with about 15,000 out of 66,000 domestic and international flights from airports being cancelled.
Flights can be cancelled in the short term for a range of unforeseeable reasons, including bad weather, aircraft defects and delays from previous flights, as well as factors within an airline's control.
The ACCC alleges Qantas made many of these cancellations for reasons within its control, such as network optimisation, route withdrawals or retention of take-off and landing slots.
“This case does not involve any alleged breach in relation to the actual cancellation of flights, but rather relates to Qantas’s conduct after it had cancelled the flights,” Cass-Gottlieb said.
Qantas was recently hit with a class action in the Federal Court on behalf of thousands of customers whose flights were cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic. Last week, Qantas reported a $1.74 billion net profit.
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