'Qantas can't guarantee flights', airline says as it launches defence in ACCC 'ghost flights' case

Qantas could be fined hundreds of millions of dollars if found guilty of misleading customers by advertising thousands of "ghost flights" — flights that had already been cancelled — but the airline on Monday launched its legal defence arguing what it did was reasonable. In a media statement, Qantas said while it "fully accepts it let customers down during the post-COVID restart, including with high cancellation rates" and "while mistakes were made, the ACCC's legal case ignores the realities of the aviation industry — airlines can't guarantee specific flight times". 'Mistakes were made': Qantas Qantas says in the examples of cancellations identified in the ACCC's media release, "100 per cent of impacted domestic passengers were offered same-day flights departing prior to or within one hour after their scheduled departure time" and that "98 per cent of impacted international passengers were offered re-accommodation options on flights within a day of their scheduled departure date". Qantas argues if they had sent texts to thousands of customers a week saying their flights had been cancelled the airline would have created a lot of "needless uncertainty".