Qantas faces the music for selling seats on cancelled flights
Qantas has been fined a whopping $120 million for purposefully misleading customers on flight bookings for several years.
After being sued by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) over dishonest conduct relating to the sale of tickets on cancelled flights, the airline admitted they were deceiving travellers by continuing to sell tickets on flights that had already been cancelled.
On Tuesday, Justice Helen Rofe formally ordered Qantas to pay a $100 million fine for their conduct, and another $20 million to travellers who were affected.
Qantas agreed to pay $225 to affected customers on domestic flights and $450 on international flights.
"This is a substantial penalty, which sets a strong signal to all businesses, big or small, that they will face serious consequences if they mislead their customers," ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said in a statement following the court orders.
Earlier this year, Cass-Gottlieb described Qantas’ conduct as “egregious and unacceptable”, after data showed that between May 2021 and August 2023, the airline sold tickets on cancelled flights to more than 86,000 customers.
In addition to cancelling the flights, the airline also failed to inform travellers that their flights were no longer going ahead as scheduled.
ACCC barrister Christopher Caleo claimed that some senior airline managers knew about different aspects of the issue, including the fact that cancelled flights were not removed from booking pages or that customers could still book those flights, but no single manager was aware of the severity of the issue.
"Qantas was aware of deficiencies in their systems," Caleo said. "Despite their awareness, it persisted over an extended period of time and affected a large number of consumers."
Caleo added that the sizable fine presented to Qantas was required in order to deter them from any further devious conduct.
"A penalty must send a signal to other companies in Australia, particularly to other large companies, that contraventions of Australian consumer law will not be tolerated," he said.
"It must sting and must not be an acceptable cost for Qantas for failing to have systems in place."
Qantas said it has made changes to its systems and agreed to notify customers of cancelled flights no longer than 48 hours from cancelling a flight and stop selling tickets for those journeys within 24 hours, with these changes also taking effect with subsidiary Jetstar.
"The fact that Qantas made these changes makes it clear that Qantas wants to avoid the matter from occurring again," barrister Ruth Higgins said.
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