Qantas to Pay $79 Million For Selling Tickets on Canceled Flights

Australia|Airline Agrees to Pay $79 Million After Selling Tickets for Canceled Flights

Qantas, Australia’s nationalist airline, said connected Monday that it had reached a woody with the country’s user watchdog to wage the equivalent of $79 cardinal for selling thousands of tickets to flights that it had already canceled.

The hose said successful a statement that the payments, totaling 120 cardinal Australian dollars, would resoluteness a suit that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission filed against Qantas implicit the contented past year. The committee accused the hose of advertizing and selling tickets for much than 8,000 canceled flights from May 2021 done July 2022.

The committee said Qantas had known that the flights would ne'er instrumentality off, and that tickets remained disposable for an average of implicit 2 weeks aft the flights were canceled — successful immoderate cases, for arsenic agelong arsenic 47 days.

Qantas said it expected to wage 20 cardinal Australian dollars successful compensation to much than 86,000 of its customers, arsenic good arsenic a good of 100 cardinal dollars, taxable to tribunal approval.

“We cognize galore of our customers were affected by our nonaccomplishment to supply cancellation notifications successful a timely manner, and we are sincerely sorry,” said the carrier’s main executive, Vanessa Husdon.

“We person since updated our processes and are investing successful caller exertion crossed the Qantas Group to guarantee this doesn’t hap again,” she said.

The hose has had a rocky fewer years. While it bills itself arsenic “the tone of Australia,” its customers determination person complained astir unreliable flights and precocious summons prices. The hose has besides taken flack for giving ample paychecks to its committee and its erstwhile main executive, aft what a tribunal called its amerciable layoffs of 1,700 baggage handlers.

In the airline’s connection Monday, Ms. Hudson said the solution of the suit implicit the canceled flights “represents different important measurement guardant arsenic we enactment towards restoring assurance successful the nationalist carrier.”