Qantas will refund customers who were mistakenly overcharged when booking Classic Flight Rewards prior to October 2021 – possibly without even realising.
This error, caused by carrier charges being filed in the wrong currency, affected some Classic Flight Reward bookings from Australia to the United States and Hong Kong.
Qantas last updated its carrier charges in 2019
Carrier charges are payable to Qantas when redeeming points for a Classic Flight Reward, in addition to the points and genuine government & third-party taxes and fees. These are set by the airline and are a huge bugbear of frequent flyers as they can add considerably to the cost of what was traditionally a “free” ticket. With Qantas, carrier charges start at $14 per passenger for a one-way domestic reward flight.
Qantas last officially made changes to its carrier charges in September 2019, as part of a raft of major changes to the Qantas Frequent Flyer program. At that time, Qantas decreased carrier charges on many routes in exchange for increasing the number of points required to book a long-haul reward flight in Premium Economy, Business or First Class.
In December 2019, Qantas also increased its carrier charges on the Singapore-London route. This was previously $50 in all classes of travel, but was raised to $95 in Economy, $115 in Premium Economy and $210 in Business & First. Qantas says that the change on the Singapore-London route should have been made in September 2019 along with the rest of the changes, but was mistakenly kept at the lower level for several months. (This change means that the carrier charges are now identical if booking a Qantas flight from Australia to London with a change of plane in Singapore, compared to booking a non-stop Australia-London flight.)
Since September 2019, Qantas has also slightly increased carrier charges on its Sydney-Honolulu route to bring them in line with the fees for flights to the US continental west coast. (In September 2019, the charges on a Sydney-Honolulu flight were $45 in Economy, $165 in Premium Economy or $120 for Business. They are now $60 for Economy and $185 for Business, with Premium Economy not currently offered on this route.)
Some customers were overcharged during 2020 & 2021
In September 2021, Australian Frequent Flyer noticed that the carrier charges being levied by Qantas on several international routes were higher than expected. The affected routes were Qantas-operated flights from Australia to Hong Kong, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Honolulu.
For example, when booking a Classic Flight Reward on the Sydney-Hong Kong route in September 2021, the airline was charging 25,200 Qantas Frequent Flyer points (the correct amount) plus $219 in taxes & carrier charges (not the correct amount) for a one-way booking in Economy.
On the Sydney-Hong Kong route, the carrier charges for a one-way Economy booking should be $45. But Qantas was requesting $103.40.
Here’s a list of the carrier charges we found to be filed incorrectly during September 2021:
| Route (one-way) | Class of travel | Correct amount (AUD) | Amount being charged |
| Australia to Hong Kong | Economy | $45 | USD75 |
| Australia to Hong Kong | Business | $55 | USD75 |
| Australia to Honolulu, Los Angeles or San Francisco | Economy | $60 | USD60 |
| Australia to Honolulu, Los Angeles or San Francisco | Premium Economy | $140 | USD140 |
We also noticed at that time that carrier charges on Qantas’ flights from Sydney to Vancouver were $16.20 higher than expected. While the correct carrier charge was being applied, Qantas was also adding a second amount described in the fare breakdown as “Carrier Charge (Q Surcharge)”.
We understand that the “Q Surcharge” was related to a Canadian air navigation charge. Qantas removed this extra fee from reward bookings in October 2021, with the airline now absorbing this cost as part of the ticket price.
Why was Qantas overcharging on some routes?
There had been no announcement about changes to Qantas carrier charges and no reduction in the amount of points required to book a seat, so we contacted Qantas on 30 September 2021 to ask if this was intentional.
It turns out that this was not a Qantas conspiracy to quietly increase carrier charges. Rather, the carrier charges on certain routes had been incorrectly filed in US Dollars instead of Australian Dollars. The actual dollar amounts were generally correct (except for Hong Kong). But because the amounts were being inadvertently charged in USD, they were higher than they should have been.
Because the amounts were being filed in another currency, they also fluctuated slightly from day to day.
On average, passengers who booked Classic Flight Rewards on the affected routes were overcharged by around $27 to $63 per sector. While this may not sound like much, it could add up to over $500 for a family of four that made a round-trip booking.
“We were inadvertently charging frequent flyers who booked Classic Flight Reward seats to four international destinations carrier charges in the wrong currency. For example, carrier charges for a flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles [in Economy] should have been AUD$60 but frequent flyers were charged USD$60, which worked out to be around AUD$27 more,” a Qantas spokesperson said.
“The error was rectified in October last year prior to international borders reopening.”
This mistake only appears to have affected passengers who booked Qantas reward flights originating in Australia.
Although we discovered this error in September last year, we’ve since found that it dates back to at least January 2020. Indeed, an AFF member who booked a flight before the pandemic was recently contacted to be told they’d been overcharged.
After we pointed out the error, Qantas undertook an audit to ensure the correct currency was being listed for carrier charges to all other destinations.
This is not the first time an airline has charged customers in the wrong currency. Although, occasionally it can also work in the customer’s favour – like the time an AFF forum moderator received a refund from Qatar Airways in Indonesian Rupiah (instead of Australian Dollars) and had $28 million available to spend on her credit card until the mistake was rectified!
Qantas will refund affected customers
Affected Qantas Frequent Flyer members are now being contacted and offered a refund, which will be processed to the credit card used to make the original Classic Flight Reward booking.
“It has taken some time to work through the data required to refund passengers, but we have now completed this process. We’ll shortly be contacting customers who were charged incorrectly to apologise and advise them that they will be receiving a refund for the amount they were overcharged,” the Qantas spokesperson said.
Many of these customers are likely unaware that they were overcharged because Qantas does not publicly publish a list of carrier charge amounts.
We think Qantas should be more transparent about its carrier charges and publish a list on its website, like Velocity Frequent Flyer does. Until that happens, other than checking the list of Qantas carrier charges on our website, there’s unfortunately no real way for Qantas Frequent Flyer members to verify what the “correct” amounts are supposed to be.
Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: “There was a pricing error on your Classic Flight Reward booking”
