All of Qantas’ bullshit and bravado last year in defending against the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) charges of misleading customers has vanished in an early morning media release today: the airline now acknowledges it lied when it took money for “ghost flights” it never had any intention of operating.
But it is still refusing to admit publicly that it misled customers.
Qantas angrily rejected the ACCC’s charges, filed in August last year, over 8,000 flights the competition regulator found the airline had taken bookings for without intending that they would ever happen, and refusing to tell would-be passengers about cancellations.
In its defence, Qantas invented an extraordinary series of excuses, including claiming that it didn’t sell tickets to flights “but rather a bundle of rights”, that it didn’t promise flights would be on time or even occur (indeed, it didn’t even promise to make reasonable endeavours to operate flights), that it didn’t tell customers about cancelled flights because it would “frustrate” them, that its “Manage Booking” feature on its website didn’t actually have any effect on what services passengers received, and Qantas’ IT systems couldn’t handle removing cancelled flights.
All of that is now exposed as another set of lies. Qantas lied to customers about flights it would never operate, then lied about why it did it.
Today’s ACCC statement, released before the sharemarket opened, states:
Qantas has admitted that it misled consumers by advertising tickets for tens of thousands of flights it had already decided to cancel, and by cancelling thousands more flights without promptly telling ticketholders of its decision.”
Note the ACCC’s use of “misled”. The conduct was “egregious and unacceptable”, according to the ACCC. “Many consumers will have made holiday, business and travel plans after booking on a phantom flight that had been cancelled.”
The airline will be forced to pay $20 million to customers in compensation and pay another $100 million in fines for its misconduct if the Federal Court agrees.
The conduct took place between May 2021 and August 2023, when the ACCC hit the airline with its charges of misleading consumers, and occurred on the watch of the now discredited and departed CEO Alan Joyce. On Joyce’s watch, Qantas was found to have illegally sacked 1,700 workers, was fined $250,000 for standing down a health and safety representative who directed staff not to clean unsafe planes (and then lied about its actions), became Australia’s most complained-about company and a by-word for appalling service amid mass cancellations and lost luggage, was accused of slot hoarding to block competitors, and tried to rip off customers with COVID-era flight credits by shutting down access to unused credits.
Incredibly, despite being forced to admit to misleading and deceptive conduct to the ACCC, Qantas today refused to admit it misled customers, and is still trying to blame the pandemic. “When flying resumed after the COVID shutdown, we recognise Qantas let down customers and fell short of our own standards,” CEO Vanessa Hudson (and former chief financial officer when the misconduct occurred) said this morning. Nowhere does the statement mention that the company has admitted to misleading customers.
The airline’s ridiculous “FAQ”, launched when it tried to defend its conduct last year, asserted the ACCC didn’t understand the airline industry and that Qantas couldn’t tell customers it cancelled their flights because “if we had sent texts to thousands of customers a week saying their flight had been cancelled and we would get back to them on their alternative flight options, we would have created a lot of needless uncertainty for those customers and even longer call centre wait times.”
Now it admits “we know many of our customers were affected by our failure to provide cancellation notifications in a timely manner and we are sincerely sorry.”
There was no word in the Qantas statement about the fate of an extra $2.2 million bonus for Joyce, withheld last year “until there was more information about the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s claim against the company,” according to reports in September.
The airline’s refusal to admit that it misled customers — the words “misled” and “misconduct” are used over and over in today’s ACCC statement — shows that the spirit of Joyce lives on in the so-called new era. Qantas lied, lied about its lies, and is continuing by omission to pretend it was all about the pandemic and its overloaded systems.
The lying never stops at the flying kangaroo.
Are you buying Qantas’ excuses? Can you see yourself flying with the airline again? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
