It has been a tough year for Qantas and its passengers – and now the Australian flag carrier has been crowned by consumer advocacy group Choice in its annual Shonky Awards.
But Qantas has fired back at the award this morning, insisting the data used by Choice is itself “shonky”.
Describing Qantas as the “spirit of disappointment”, Choice criticised the carrier for delayed flights, lost baggage, airport chaos and the problems many customers had trying to claim travel credit stemming from Covid-19 pandemic flight cancellations.
The consumer group also called out long wait times for customer service, claiming the company appeared “deliberately to be going out of its way to win a Shonky Award”.
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“Qantas has always sold itself as the premium Australian domestic airline, and Australians have been very proud of Qantas as a premium airline,” Choice money and travel expert Jodi Bird said.
“But what we’ve seen recently is Qantas taken down to the level of a budget airline.”
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A Qantas Airbus A380 departing Sydney Airport.
Choice claimed the airline had the worst rate of on-time domestic arrivals of any Australian airline in July, with a disappointing 47.1% that had improved to 69.2% in September.
It claimed Qantas and Jetstar combined were sitting on about AUD$1.4 billion (NZ$1.53b) in unused flight credits and future bookings in April, highlighting customer complaints that flights cost more when booking with vouchers.
“At the beginning of the pandemic Qantas communicated to their customers that they were entitled to a credit voucher for cancelled flights,” Bird said.
“Qantas didn’t state upfront that customers may be entitled to refunds.”
The “spirit of Australia” has issued a series of apologies for service problems throughout the year, culminating in a AUD$50 discount and message from CEO Alan Joyce for millions of frequent flyers.
“Over the past few months, too many of you have had flights delayed, flights cancelled and bags misplaced,” he said in August.
“There are good reasons why, but when it comes to what you expect from Qantas, it’s not good enough.
“On behalf of the national carrier, I want to apologise and assure you that we’re working hard to get back to our best.”
Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce apologised to millions of frequent flyers in August for service problems.
In a statement to 9News.com.au, Qantas claimed Choice’s data is incorrect and the airline has been transparent about the challenges facing the entire airline industry.
“These awards are clearly out of date and the data Choice is using is itself a bit shonky,” a Qantas spokesperson said.
“We had several months of poor performance earlier in the year, but it’s improved significantly since August and we’re back to our pre-Covid level of service.
“We’ve been very transparent with our performance figures, both good and bad, but Choice is using figures that are just wrong.
The spokesperson said the data Choice used to analyse wait times was incorrect.
“Our call wait times are less than half what Choice is claiming,” they said.
“Our customers have redeemed more than AUD$1 billion in Covid-related flight credits. The conditions for these are the same or better than they were pre-Covid and we’re actively encouraging our customers to use them.
“No one is disputing the fact we had issues earlier this year, and we apologised for that, but it’s disappointing that Choice failed to acknowledge the impact that Covid and border closures have had on the entire aviation industry.”
This story was originally published on Nine News and is republished with permission.
