Qantas, an airline in Australia, agreed to pay $79 million to settle a lawsuit with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The issue was about ghost flights. These are flights that were canceled, but the airline still sold tickets for them. More than 86,000 customers bought tickets for these non-existent flights. This settlement is the second-largest penalty in Australia’s history, just after the $81 million fine that Volkswagen Group paid in 2019 over Dieselgate.
As part of the settlement, Qantas will spend about $13.2 million on a program to help affected passengers. According to the BBC, international customers will get $298, and domestic customers will receive $149. This money is given along with the refund or a new flight that passengers would have gotten when they found out their flight was canceled.
Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson apologized for the situation. She said that when flights resumed after the COVID-19 shutdown, Qantas failed to notify customers about flight cancellations on time. This added stress for customers who were already anxious about traveling again. Hudson acknowledged that Qantas did not provide enough support to customers and didn’t have the right technology and systems in place to help their staff.
Vanessa Hudson became the first female CEO of Qantas in May 2023. She took over during a time when the airline was trying to rebuild its reputation. Besides the ghost flights issue, the High Court of Australia ruled in September 2023 that Qantas unfairly fired 1,700 ground staff across ten airports in 2020.
