HAD you been a fly on the wall buzzing around the Qantas offices on Monday, I’d hazard a guess out of your five eyes, you may have seen a champagne cork or two popping.
There’s every chance those corks were coming from the boardroom, because the national carrier had managed to escape its ‘ghost flights’ scandal with barely more than a ruler across the knuckles.
First, rewind back to August 2023 when the issue first came to light but consider it from the point of view of the travellers impacted.
According to the ACCC, passengers who thought they were booked on QF93 from Melbourne to Los Angeles on 06 May 2022 would have received a cancellation notice from Qantas, either via email or a mobile app notification, two days before they were due to take off. This was despite Qantas making the decision six days earlier to shelve the flight, yet for four more days, continued to sell tickets for it.
With only two days’ notice, hundreds of holidaymakers and business travellers found themselves needing to book extra accommodation, reschedule meetings, seminars and event attendances and potentially even rebook cruises, rental vehicles and tours, forking out cancellation penalties and higher costs to rebook their itineraries. Not to mention the added mental stress and headaches caused by such a drama.
This was just one example. The ACCC alleged that for more than 10,000 flights departing between May and July 2022, Qantas didn’t notify ticketholders for between 18 and in some cases 48 days after the decision was made to cancel the flight.
That’s up to seven weeks slower than they should have, which for the tens of thousands of travellers affected, would have been plenty of time to make alternate arrangements with a much lower level of stress – probably even without any fees.
Let’s also consider the role thousands of hard-working travel agents would have played in this fiasco, all of whom would have received anguished phone calls at any hour of the day and night from their aggrieved clients needing help with changing their travel plans. What will they receive from Qantas? It won’t be any money. Won’t even be an apology.
In addition to a $100 million fine, Qantas will spend another $20 million on ‘sorry’ payments to thousands of customers who had their travel plans thrown into disarray. Each customer flying domestically will receive $225, with $450 going to those due to travel overseas. Cold comfort when potentially thousands would have been spent changing travel plans.
On the other side of the fence, the ACCC has gone from the prized courtroom pugilist landing haymakers on our transgressing corporate heavyweights to a bruised housecat.
This is the same organisation which played a part in levying a $1.3 billion fine from Westpac, $700 million from the Commonwealth Bank and $125 million from Volkswagen for various acts of corporate ignominy.
The ACCC said at the time of the allegations it would seek “a new record penalty” for the breach of Australian consumer law, to intimidate other companies and instil fear of the competition watchdog among corporate Australia.
So after such success with previous cases, why back down on Qantas? The airline steadfastly denied its hand in the allegations, only to now reverse course and admit guilt. It should have been an open and shut case.
Now, rather than sticking to its guns and go to court, the ACCC’s own reputation has sustained a black eye, and the “fear” it spoke about couldn’t be further from reality.
For their ‘sorry’ payment, Qantas said it will contact each affected traveller with instructions on how to lodge a claim, putting the onus on them to file accordingly before what might be an expeditious deadline. I think it can be safely presumed not every one of them will do so, softening the blow even more for the airline.
For a global aviation heavyweight, it’s a paltry penalty, especially when you consider just this past February when Qantas posted a $1.25 billion underlying profit before tax, which is still well north of $850 million after the government gets its slice.
Cue the champagne.
