"We know that the only way to fix it is by delivering consistently"
Agree - that's been drafted, reviewed and tweaked multiple times by legal, comms, et al. The tone may initially seem more contrite than usual but I read it more as deliberately nonchalant in an effort to minimise the seriousness of it all.
If your logic is correct I got it wrong as I believe many others will also.
That’s what you get when you use ChatGPT to write press releases rather than employing humans.
Not sure whether to laugh or cry at your comment?
No, but they're walking a tightrope on more than a couple of fronts at the moment. More antagonistic commentary especially with pending court action for multiple cases which will just invite more coverage from media is not what they need right now.
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It's ridiculous, but knowing the state of Qantas IT I can totally believe it (surely they can just zero out the flights though???).
Definitely
Is it at this point when the ACCC says, "We don't care - you don't get to weasel out of it. Either you provide the service as sold or you don't promote / sell it in the first place, or you can all go to jail."
Thanks for sharing, and a very interesting blurb from the press release (emphasis added):
So Qantas cancelled flights they never intended on making and yet kept selling those flights because to do otherwise would result in call centre wait times increasing substantially? Makes a whole of sense to me!
So they're saying it is too difficult to zero out all the inventory for a flight?
That is factually incorrect. There were other Australian airlines operating internationally during that time. How do I know? I flew JetStar internationally to Honolulu, unless of course Qantas deems Hawaii a domestic destination (which I suppose is the case if you have Global Entry but technically Australians don't qualify for that one).
I think they have a decent FAQ there, but I wonder how accurate their claim about "people who paid for a flight were given a flight, or a refund" is.
This is addressed later in the press release. They state that their system doesn't allow them to cancel the flights without also providing impacted customers with alternate flights at the same time. However, they didn't have enough staff to prepare the alternate flights immediately.So Qantas cancelled flights they never intended on making and yet kept selling those flights because to do otherwise would result in call centre wait times increasing substantially? Makes a whole of sense to me!
A big issue is that Qantas' own policies limit rebooking options. In particular, contractually they only need to put you on the next available service they operate. Whilst that might be acceptable if you are travelling from say Sydney to Melbourne, it's not gonna do you much good if you're stranded in Seoul or Dallas where you may have to wait many days to get put on a new flight. What is needed here isn't necessarily action by the ACCC on this front (although it certainly is welcome), but rather a passenger bill of rights that forces the airlines to put you on the next available flight, even if that flight is not operated by them. This is precisely what they do in Canada with the APPR when delays exceed 9 hours.
This isn't just a Qantas thing by the way, every airline was pulling this stunt in large part hoping that the customer is tricked into accepting the credit. What they are doing may not be illegal in many jurisdictions but it is immoral. This is one reason why in the EU, when a flight gets cancelled the airlines are obligated to tell you what your rights are.
I'm not suggesting they cancel any flights. They simply need to go into their system and zero out the inventory (i.e. mark the number of seats available for sale in Economy as 0, Business as 0 and so forth). Hence the flight will still be in the system but it will be unbookable for customers. This by the way, is a practice many airlines including Qantas do during normal times.
A big issue is IT. Why is it that on many other airlines rebooking is done either automatically or there is an option for the customer to select a new flight online. In particular, when Air Canada cancelled my flight from LA to Seoul, I could go online and choose any flight operated by them or any of their partners. And this by the way was on a complex multi-city itinerary. Much like wifi onboard international flights, Qantas has again proven itself behind the times.
If this defence was reasonable, then a passenger could go up to an airline and say, "we don't take particular flights, we just have an agreement that we'll be travelling sometime" when they can't take a particular flight. The fact of the matter is, there is a reasonable expectation that when you book a flight for a specific time, that the flight will go ahead as scheduled. Yes delays and cancellations occur but it is should be the exception not the expectation. And when you systematically cancels thousands of flights, which Qantas admits to, then aren't you in some way knowingly misleading consumers by making a false representation? I'm not a lawyer but I suspect that this is a breach of common law.
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