Qantas Airways Ltd. was sued by Australia’s competition watchdog for allegedly selling seats on thousands of cancelled flights, piling pressure on an airline already under lawmaker scrutiny for its treatment of customers and record profits.
For more than 8,000 scrapped services between May and July 2022, Qantas kept selling tickets for an average of more than two weeks, and sometimes longer than a month, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission said Thursday as it started Federal Court proceedings against the airline.
Qantas also allegedly took weeks to tell ticketholders on more than 10,000 flights in the same period that the services had been cancelled. All told, Qantas pulled almost one quarter of its commercial schedule in Australia between May and July of last year. In most cases, Qantas either continued to sell seats or didn’t tell ticketholders for days, or sometimes both, according to the ACCC.
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The investigation, which used specialist data analysis and compulsory information notices, suggests the airline benefited — at passengers’ expense — from large-scale cancellations that Qantas failed to publicize. The legal action comes days after Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce, who retires in November after 15 years at the helm, was interrogated by a cost-of-living parliamentary committee.
“Qantas made many of these cancellations for reasons that were within its control,” ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said. The action “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 cancelled.”
Qantas didn’t reply to an email seeking comment Thursday.
Qantas stock fell as much as 4.3% before trading down 3.7% at A$5.82 ($3.77) at 10:32 a.m. in Sydney.
‘Deeply Concerning’
The ACCC, using specialist internal data analysts, found Qantas cancelled about 15,000 out of 66,000 domestic and international flights from airports in all states and mainland territories in its published schedule. The legal proceedings relate to more than 10,000 of those cancelled flights.
“These are deeply concerning allegations,” Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers said in a statement.
The ACCC said it’s seeking orders including penalties, injunctions, declarations and costs. The ACCC draws more complaints about Qantas than about any other business. Last year, it received more than 1,300 complaints about Qantas cancellations.
Qantas was this month served with a class-action lawsuit for allegedly not refunding passengers for flights cancelled during the pandemic, and illegally benefiting by retaining billion of dollars in customer funds, after the carrier racked up some A$2 billion in Covid-related travel credits.
Read More: Qantas Hit by Lawsuit for Multibillion Dollar Travel Credits
Last month the airline encouraged passengers to use up the remaining A$400 million of credits. As the ACCC announced its lawsuit Thursday, the Age newspaper reported that Qantas is scrapping the expiry date on Covid flight credits.
(Updates throughout.)
