The rebound in post-pandemic air travel was a welcome relief for the aviation industry, but the excitement was short-lived as air travel chaos continued to plague airline operators. Late flights, cancellations, pilot strikes, and lost baggage were at their worse during peak travel or vacation season.
Although flights from all airlines are facing disruption, Qantas seems to be taking the maximum brunt of complaints. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has received complaints about Qantas over the past few months and an investigation is underway about late or cancelled flights. However, as per the sources, the ACCC denied commenting on what potential breaches of consumer law by Qantas they were investigating.
The ACCC recently published a quarterly report in which it predicted that air travel won’t be returning to normal until next year when the workforce crisis was dealt with as a priority. “We are aware that for many consumers, long-awaited travel fell well short of expectations with record delays, very high rates of cancellations, lost baggage, and long wait times for call centres. We have been engaging closely with airlines to understand the source of these problems,” said Cass-Gottlieb ACCC Chair.
“We expect that airlines will be honest and proactive in communicating to passengers the reasons why a flight is delayed or cancelled, how the consumer guarantees apply, and what other compensation they are entitled to,” Cass-Gottlieb further added.
Sources confirm that ACCC is looking out for any evidence of misleading statements in relation to the way Qantas has sold its services to customers. If and when evidence of such misleading statements is found, ACCC plans to pursue and investigate those points.
As per the ACCC report, on-time flights were at the lowest level ever recorded, with only 55% of flights arriving on time in July compared to the long-term average of 81.9%. Besides, 6.1% of flights were cancelled which is more than three times the long-term average of 2.1%, but less than the peak in April 2020 when a third of flights were cancelled due to lockdowns and border closures.
Although ACCC acknowledges that there were multiple factors behind the crisis that was not in the control of airlines, including airport security and air traffic control problems, it is of the opinion that airlines can salvage the situation by what they can control, for instance, they can be realistic about the number of flights that they can serve in a reliable way based on their level of staffing, and take bookings for that number of flights and not for a higher number of flights
The ACCC has further confirmed it is investigating difficulties consumers are facing in using Qantas flight credits. As the investigation is ongoing the ACCC has not commented further.
During the pandemic, Qantas slashed its workforce by about 7,800 people as most of its fleet was grounded, and shed an additional 2,000 contractors. Later Qantas re-hired 1,500 staff workforce shortage continues to grapple the industry at large and to make matters worse ground handling personnel at Qantas are planning a 24-hour strike on September 12, 2022, adding to the airline’s woes.