CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – Australia’s consumer watchdog on Friday called for Qantas Airways to be punished with record fines for selling tickets on thousands of flights that were already cancelled.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said Qantas’ fine for alleged breaches of consumer law follows from an Australian record AUD 125 million ($81 million) fine imposed on Volkswagen Group in 2019 for misleading customers should be more than doubled. Exhaust from its diesel engines.
“We believe this should be a record fine for this conduct,” Cass-Gottieb told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “We are going to seek a penalty that will underline that this is not just a cost of doing business.”
“We believe that these penalties are too few. We believe that the fine should not be in crores but in crores.
The commission filed a lawsuit against Qantas in the federal court on Thursday, alleging that Australia’s flagship airline engaged in false, misleading or deceptive conduct by advertising tickets for more than 8,000 flights from May to July last year that were had already been canceled but not removed from sale.
Qantas canceled 1 out of 4 flights during the three month period.
The commission said Qantas continued to sell tickets for an average of more than two weeks after flights were cancelled, and in some cases up to 47 days.
Customers who bought tickets before flights were canceled were notified on average 18 days after the cancellation and in some cases 48 days later.
This resulted in less time for customers to make alternate bookings and cost them more to fly at a particular time.
The commission said that in one case, Qantas sold 21 tickets for a Sydney to San Francisco service up to 40 days after the July 29, 2022 flight was cancelled.
Qantas said it would give a full answer to the commission’s allegations in court.
“We have a long-term approach to managing flight cancellations, with a focus on providing rebooking options or refunds to customers. This is a process that is in line with common practice at many other airlines, a Qantas statement said.
“It is important to note that the period between May and July 2022 predicted by the ACCC was a time of unprecedented turmoil for the entire airline industry. Qantas said “all airlines were facing well-publicised issues from a very challenging restart, with border uncertainty, industry staff shortages and fleet availability causing considerable disruption.”
The lawsuit comes a week after Qantas reported a record profit for the financial year ended June 30, following years of losses due to the pandemic.
Its underlying profit for the year before tax was AU$2.47 billion ($1.6 billion), compared with a loss of AU$1.86 billion ($1.2 billion) in the previous year.
Statutory profit after tax for the latest year was AU$1.74 billion ($1.13 billion).
Since Volkswagen made false or misleading representations on more than 57,000 diesel vehicles imported into Australia during the five years to 2015, fines for each breach of Australian consumer law have increased from AU$1.1 million ($712,000) to AU$10 million ($6.5 million) It is done.
Rod McGuirk, The Associated Press
