Jetstar has become the subject of a class action in the Federal Court of Australia after the airline allegedly failed to refund tickets for cancelled flights during the COVID pandemic from 2020 to 2022.
According to Echo Law, which brought the case against Jetstar on August 21, airlines were legally obliged to refund cancelled flights during the pandemic.
“Instead, Jetstar issued the majority of its customers with travel credits (also called travel vouchers), which were subject to significant restrictions,” a statement from Echo Law said.
“Accordingly, those travel credits were of much lower value to customers than the refunds to which customers were entitled.”
The law firm is encouraging affected passengers to join the class action at no cost, claiming that customers may be entitled to compensation even if they used up their supplied flight credits.
In response, a spokesperson for Jetstar told The Epoch Times that the airline is reviewing the claims made in the class action.
“Last year we removed expiry dates for COVID vouchers so they can be used indefinitely,” they said.
“These vouchers are also multi-use, meaning they can be used across multiple bookings and for multiple people.”
The Epoch Times understands expiry dates were removed from all Jetstar vouchers in August 2023, but the vouchers are not redeemable for cash.
Lawyers from Echo Law claim that not issuing cash refunds benefited Jetstar financially at customers’ expense, and is a breach of contract.
They assert that Jetstar engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct in contravention of Australian Consumer Law by misleading customers and that the airline engaged in a pattern of unconscionable conduct.
“The right thing for Jetstar to do when it cancelled all those flights was to return its customers’ money without delay,” Echo Law Partner Andrew Paull said in a statement.
“Jetstar customers were pushed into holding hundreds of millions of dollars in restricted travel credits, even though this wasn’t what those customers had agreed to as part of the airline’s terms and conditions.
“Jetstar promotes itself as a values-driven, low-fare airline committed to helping ’more people fly, more often,' yet it’s a highly profitable part of the Qantas Group, and when COVID caused widespread flight cancellations it put those profits ahead of its customers’ interests.”
The class action seeks to recover any outstanding refunds, compensation for the difference between the value of the travel credits and cash refunds, as well as interest and consequential losses, such as the loss of use of money.
Echo Law previously brought a class action against Qantas 2023 for similar issues during the pandemic.
Like the Jetstar flights, Echo Law says Qantas customers were entitled to refunds instead of flight credits.
