Australia’s Qantas has reached a settlement with the national consumer watchdog ACCC worth 61 million euros. The reason: even though Qantas knew that flights had been canceled, it still continued to sell tickets, reports the German dpa. After the coronavirus pandemic, Qantas Airways sold tens of thousands of tickets, although some flights had been cancelled weeks before. This is now costing the airline dearly: because of this violation of Australian consumer law, it has reached a settlement with the National Commission for Competition and Consumer Protection (ACCC) to pay 100 million Australian dollars (about 61 million euros). In addition, an additional 20 million Australian dollars will be allocated to compensate more than 86,000 affected travellers. These will each receive between $225 and $450. These were mainly domestic flights, which continued to be sold for days or even weeks, although the connections had already been canceled. The ACCC had sued Qantas last year for these so-called ghost flights. “Today is an important step forward as we work to restore confidence in the national airline,” said Vanessa Hudson, CEO of Qantas. “We recognise that Qantas failed its customers and failed to meet its own standards when flights resumed following the Covid lockdown.” The company deeply regrets this. In the meantime, investments have been made in new technologies ‘to ensure that this does not happen again’. (Photo Shutterstock).
