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Journey breakdown · Regulation and trust · Qantas

Qantas ghost flights: where the cancellation journey broke customer trust

By BREME · · 5 minute read

In short

Between May 2021 and August 2023, Qantas sold tickets on flights it had already decided to cancel and did not promptly tell people who already held tickets. Qantas admitted breaching the Australian Consumer Law, and on 8 October 2024 the Federal Court ordered a $100 million penalty, on top of a $20 million customer remediation program. The break was not one bad email. It was a gap between an operational decision and the customer's view of their booking.

Who this is for: CX leads, operations managers and executives in airlines, travel, events, transport and any subscription or booking business where an internal decision can change what a customer has already paid for.

What happened, in brief

The ACCC took Qantas to court in 2023. On 6 May 2024 the two parties announced a settlement: Qantas would run a remediation program projected at $20 million and, subject to court approval, pay a $100 million civil penalty.

On 8 October 2024, Justice Helen Rofe of the Federal Court ordered the $100 million penalty. As reported by Region Canberra, it was made up of $70 million for continuing to sell tickets on cancelled flights and $30 million for failing to promptly notify customers of cancellations. Qantas admitted misleading or deceptive conduct, false or misleading representations and conduct liable to mislead the public, all in breach of the Australian Consumer Law.

Some claims did not proceed. Qantas's own release says the ACCC was no longer pursuing claims about wrongful acceptance of payment, and that all affected customers were offered a refund or an alternative flight. We take both of those as part of the record.

Stage one: booking a flight that was already cancelled

The journey starts with a promise. A customer picks a date and time, pays, and receives a booking that says the flight exists. Everything they do next, from leave requests to hotel bookings to collecting someone from the airport, is planned around that promise.

According to the reporting of the court outcome, tickets were sold on already cancelled flights between 21 May 2021 and 26 August 2023, affecting 86,597 customers across more than 70,000 flights. Tickets for cancelled flights stayed on sale for about 11 days on average after the cancellation decision, and in some cases up to 62 days. Qantas also admitted that some senior managers knew cancelled flights were not immediately being removed from sale.

ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb described the conduct as egregious and unacceptable, and said many consumers made plans after booking on a phantom flight.

Stage two: the silence between booking and travel

For customers who already held tickets, the break came later and quietly. Existing ticket holders were not promptly told about cancellations, and Manage Booking pages were not promptly updated. A customer checking their own booking could see a flight that, inside the airline, no longer existed.

This is the part of the journey most organisations never map, because nothing is meant to happen there. The customer has paid and is waiting. But it is exactly where trust is held or lost, because the customer is relying on the organisation to tell them if anything changes.

The ACCC said up to about 880,000 consumers were affected. CHOICE reported that about 883,000 people are believed to have been misled by late cancellation notices, and that they are not receiving compensation under the agreement, which covered people who booked after the decision to cancel.

Stage three: finding out, and putting plans back together

When a customer finally learns a flight is gone, the cost lands on them. They rebook, cancel accommodation, rearrange work and family. Qantas said in its May 2024 release that more than 80 per cent of affected domestic passengers were offered an alternative flight departing before or within three hours of the original time, and more than 60 per cent of international passengers within 12 hours.

Recovery options matter, but they do not undo the earlier break. A good rebooking offer arrives after the customer has already discovered that the information they relied on was wrong.

Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson said the airline let down customers and fell short of its own standards, and acknowledged that it did not have the technology and systems in place to support its people. That is a candid description of where the journey failed: behind the scenes, in the handover between a scheduling decision and what customers could see.

Stage four: remediation

The remediation program covered more than 86,000 customers who booked a flight two or more days after the cancellation decision. They were offered $225 for domestic and trans-Tasman flights and $450 for international flights, on top of any refund or alternative flight. Claims went through a dedicated online portal, independently audited, and Qantas said it would notify customers by email.

Qantas also gave the ACCC court-enforceable commitments, which also apply to Jetstar: to notify customers of a cancelled flight as soon as practicable and no more than 48 hours after deciding to cancel, and to stop selling a cancelled flight as soon as practicable and within 24 hours of the decision.

What a well-designed cancellation journey looks like

Those two numbers, 24 hours and 48 hours, are a useful starting benchmark for any business where an internal decision can change a booking. When we map this kind of journey, we put the decision itself on the wall as a customer touchpoint, because to the customer it is one. Then we check that these things are true:

  • One decision, three actions. The moment a service is cancelled, it comes off sale, existing customers are queued for notice, and the booking view updates. If those are separate manual steps in separate teams, they will drift apart.
  • The booking view tells the truth. Whatever the customer sees when they check their own booking matches the internal record at that moment.
  • Notice goes through the channel the customer actually reads, says plainly what changed, and offers the options straight away: rebook, refund or talk to a person.
  • Someone owns the gap. Name the person responsible for the time between an operational decision and the customer knowing about it, and report on that time every week.
  • Measure from the customer's side. Track hours from decision to notice, and tickets sold after a decision, not only cancellation volumes.

The lesson for other organisations

Most trust breaks in long journeys do not happen at the counter or on the phone. They happen in the quiet middle, when a customer is relying on information you hold and they cannot see. If your organisation changes plans, schedules, appointments or deliveries after a customer has paid, map that middle stage first and time it.

Sources

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