Australia’s competition regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), has initiated legal proceedings against Qantas Airways. The ACCC claims that the airline sold thousands of tickets for flights it knew had been cancelled between May and July 2022.
According to the ACCC, Qantas continued selling tickets for over 8,000 flights for an average of more than two weeks after the flights were cancelled. In some cases, the delay was as long as 47 days. Additionally, the carrier allegedly failed to inform ticketholders of over 10,000 cancelled flights for an average of 18 days, and in some cases, up to 48 days.
ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb stated that Qantas’s behavior deprived customers of sufficient time to make alternative arrangements and may have led them to pay higher prices for flights that had already been cancelled.
At the time of writing, Qantas has not provided any comment on the matter.
Qantas recently achieved a significant milestone by recording an annual net profit of AUD 1.75 billion for the 12 months through June. This marks the airline’s return to profitability for the first time since fiscal 2019. Following this accomplishment, Qantas has launched a new share buyback totaling AUD 500 million.