CASL Funds Class Action Against Qantas Over Covid Travel Credits
As many industry leaders and commentators have predicted, we are increasingly seeing new litigation being brought to address institutional or corporate wrongdoing during the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to the recent class actions brought against UK universities for their pandemic policies, this week, a new lawsuit was brought against a major airline for alleged anti-consumer behavior during the pandemic. An article in The Guardian summarizes the recently announced class action that is being brought against Qantas over its use of travel credits to refund customers for cancelled flights during the pandemic. The class action, which is being brought by Echo Law and funded by CASL, alleges that the airline “breached its contracts with customers by failing to provide cash refunds for cancelled flights” and “engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct in contravention of the Australian Consumer Law”. Andrew Paull, partner at Echo Law, stated that the travel credits policy allowed Qantas to “take advantage of its own customers and effectively treat them as providers of over $1 billion in interest-free loans”. Paull also highlighted that since the pandemic, customers have been pressured to ‘use or lose’ their travel credits, and as a result, have unjustifiably ended up spending more money than they did on their original flight bookings. In response to the class action, Qantas has released a statement rejecting the allegations and defending its travel credits policy. The airline argues that the credits policy has already delivered “well in excess of $1bn in refunds”, and in an effort to give customers more flexibility it has “extended the expiry dates three times.” On its website, Echo Law sets out the recovery aims of the class action: “In addition to seeking refunds of any outstanding amounts due to Qantas customers, and compensation representing the difference between the ‘value’ of the credits issued to customers as compared to a cash refund, the claim seeks to recover an award for interest and for consequential losses - for example, compensation for ‘loss of use of money’, which recognizes the impact on customers who were deprived of a significant sum of money for a lengthy period of time.”
