Qantas settles COVID-19 flight credit class action for A$105 million
Here's what it means for you.
If you booked a Qantas flight that was cancelled during the pandemic, you could soon see real cash instead of hard-to-use credits.
What happened
Qantas Airways agreed to pay A$105 million to settle a class action over its refusal to issue cash refunds for COVID-19 flight cancellations between January 2020 and November 2022.
The Context
- Refunds, not credits: Qantas originally issued flight credits—worth A$570 million—for cancelled flights, but many passengers struggled to redeem them due to limited availability and rising fares.
- Legal pushback: Echo Law launched a class action in August 2023, alleging Qantas breached contracts and consumer law by withholding cash refunds.
- Pending payout: The settlement, which covers both domestic and international flights, is awaiting Federal Court approval; eligible passengers could number in the hundreds of thousands.
The Number
— the settlement pool for affected customers, over 90% higher than Qantas’s original A$55 million provision, signaling the scale of potential compensation.
Takeaway
Once the court approves, expect a court-supervised process to identify and pay out eligible passengers by mid-2027—setting a precedent for post-pandemic consumer claims.
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