Qantas faces court test over duty of care to customers

[kangarooflyer88]

"A disgruntled Qantas customer is taking the airline to court in an effort to recoup over $10,000 he spent to return home to Australia after his South American flights were delayed by 12-days."

No travel insurance?

You shouldn't need travel insurance at all to deal with airlines cancelling flights on you. It is also unreasonable to expect customers to sit for nearly two weeks at their origin because of scheduling issues on your end. What would be interesting is to see whether the passenger told the airline it's unacceptable and rebook me on another airline (and what the response was there). If the airline flat out said no, then I think we can argue that a breach of contract occurred here since the airline didn't return the passenger home in a reasonable amount of time.

What will be interesting to see is what they choose to rebook into and whether it was a reasonable choice. For instance if they flew out coach to South America but then rebooked themselves into business that might not fly. On the other hand, if that was the price of economy fares or if business was the only cabin available, perhaps they would have a stronger leg to stand on there.

To be honest I'm surprised that one of the usual ambulance-chasing law firms hasn't taken out a class-action against Qantas "as a public service to the travelling public".

A big issue is Australia has zero consumer protection laws in general, and particularly when it comes to air travel. Canada, the EU and some other countries provide robust guarantees on such things as reroutings within a reasonable time on any airline in the event of prolonged cancellations, compensation for delayed flights, providing meals and accommodation, etc. At best the law firms here would likely have things like contract law to deal with, which whilst robust may not offer the same duty of care as an EU261.

-RooFlyer88

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I think Australia generally has pretty good consumer laws… for example those around refunds, repairs and replacements for good and services. And pretty wide reaching in that you can go back to either the shop or the manufacturer.

But air travel is way behind… stuck in the 1950s mentality when air travel was quite unpredictable, and very expensive.

 

[BD1959]

But air travel is way behind… stuck in the 1950s mentality when air travel was quite unpredictable, and very expensive.

Back when governments had interests in most of the airlines and didn't want to be liable for not meeting their obligations. Its a very different world now and unfortunately the pollies are more interested in keeping their CL benefits than representing the electorate who employ them.

Regards,

BD