The ACCC alleges the airline cancelled flights to further its own interests, and then kept selling tickets anyway. The parallels with the fees-for-no-service banking scandal are striking.
It’s almost hard to get your head around the potential ramifications of the Australian Competition Consumer Commission’s Federal Court action against Qantas, alleging the airline sold tickets on a staggering 8000 flights that it had already cancelled.
While it is the actions after Qantas cancelled the flights that the ACCC is going after here, is it notable that ACCC chairwoman Gina Cass-Gottlieb says many of these cancellations were due not to weather or air traffic control matters, but “to reasons that were within its control, such as network optimisation including in response to shifts in consumer demand, route withdrawals or retention of take-off and landing slots at certain airports”.
The banks, who’ve now paid out billions in remediation over the fees-for-no-service scandal, would probably tell Qantas that these arguments won’t stack up. And that’s the bottom line here. Qantas will have a hard time explaining how it took customers’ money on 8000 flights if it knew they wouldn’t take off.The experience of the banking royal commission tells us that it will not just be the Albanese government that sees Qantas in a different light if these allegations are proven.
Domestic travellers might have few alternatives to Qantas, but that’s not the case for international travellers. And it will be no surprise if the government’s “national interest” argument against blocking foreign airlines crumbles pretty quickly in the wake of this ACCC action.
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