Qantas fake flights misled almost 1m customers

Qantas Airways Ltd.’s ghost-flight scandal misled almost 1m customers booked on tens of thousands of non-existent services, according to court documents that reveal the scale of the misconduct and the airline’s awareness of the problem. Qantas settled the lawsuit in May, agreeing to pay A$120m ($82m) in fines and compensation for selling tickets on flights it had already decided to cancel. The Australian carrier also admitted misleading ticketholders by not telling them promptly they were actually booked on phantom services. The bombshell allegations led to the premature departure of CEO Alan Joyce last year, but it wasn’t clear at the time how much Qantas knew about its own ticketing deficiencies. The case was brought by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, which had sought a record penalty of more than A$250m. Thursday’s statement of agreed facts and admissions, posted on the Federal Court of Australia’s website, said “senior managers” at Qantas collectively knew of all the impacts on passengers, but no single person was privy to the whole picture. “Qantas was aware of the way in which its system operated,” the filing said. “Consumers suffered harm as a result of Qantas’s contravening conduct.” The managers concerned weren’t identified, though Qantas said current CEO Vanessa Hudson wasn’t among them. Hudson was previously the carrier’s group chief financial officer. She was appointed CEO in September 2023. Qantas could have manually removed a canceled flight from sale immediately, but never did, according to the filing. The airline’s systems have since been updated.<br/>