The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has sued Australian airlines today for allegedly engaging in “false, misleading, or deceptive conduct.”
As per the consumer watchdog, flights that were scheduled to depart between May and July 2022 were sold by Qantas for an average of over two weeks, and in some instances for as long as 47 days after they had been canceled.
Further findings revealed that the airline failed to notify ticket holders regarding the cancellation of their flights for more than 10,000 flights set to depart between May and July 2022, for an average of 18 days and up to 48 days.
A “detailed investigation” is launched into Quantas’s flight cancellation practices, which might have affected more than tens of thousands of people, as per ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb.
“We allege that Qantas’s conduct in continuing to sell tickets to canceled flights, and not updating ticket holders about canceled 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 canceled,” Cass-Gottlieb stated.
1 in 4 flights are cancelled.
As per the investigation, the ACCC revealed that almost one in four flights were canceled between May and July 2022. Out of 66,000 flights, 15,000 domestic and international flights were canceled.
Flights can be canceled in the short term due to unforeseeable reasons like bad weather, defects in aircraft, delays from previous flights, and even those factors that are well within the reach of airlines’ control.
As per the ACCC findings, most of the flights that were canceled were well within the reach of the airlines due to factors such as route withdrawals, network optimization, 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 canceled the flights,” Cass-Gottlieb commented.
A class action lawsuit against Qantas was recently filed in Federal Court on behalf of hundreds of passengers whose flights were canceled because of the COVID-19 outbreak. Qantas posted a net profit of $1.74 billion last week.
- Published By Team Australia News
