From Australia to the United States, first-class round-trip airfares usually reach up to 28,000 Australian dollars (approximately 19,000 US dollars), but Qantas recently offered discounts of up to 85%.
This incident occurred last Thursday (August 23) when Qantas opened ticket bookings for 8 hours, due to an airline coding error. Before the error was corrected, about 300 lucky individuals were able to purchase first-class tickets from Australia to the United States for as low as 3,400 US dollars each on the airline’s website.
In a statement released on that day, Qantas mentioned, “Unfortunately, the ticket prices this time were just too favorable.”
However, the company stated that they would not cancel the tickets purchased by passengers and would upgrade them to business class for free. Additionally, passengers not satisfied with the business class upgrade could also get a full refund.
“In a gesture of goodwill, we have rebooked customers into business class for no additional charge. Customers may also opt for a full refund.”
Flying Qantas business class between Australia and the United States typically costs around 11,000 US dollars. This means that passengers who are given the business class upgrade still receive a 65% discount compared to the regular business class fare.
As Qantas handles this incident with goodwill, people couldn’t help but recall a similar mishap involving the company last year.
In August last year, the Australian regulatory authority accused Qantas in a lawsuit of selling over eight thousand tickets for flights that had been canceled, affecting more than 86,000 passengers.
Ultimately, in May, the company agreed to pay nearly 80 million US dollars to settle the lawsuit, with over 13 million US dollars being awarded to the affected customers as compensation.
According to Qantas’ regulations, the airline has the right to cancel tickets or bookings sold due to obvious errors or mistakes, and provide a refund, or resell the tickets at the “correct fare.” This provides a legal basis for Qantas to take appropriate measures when dealing with ticket pricing errors.