QANTAS – Covid cancellation – refused rebooking

[Notmyrealname]

Asking for a friend 🙂

Mates of ours got the £100 QANTAS offer back in the day before Covid.

Obs due to Covid their flight was cancelled way back in 2020.

QANTAS did reschedule this for Feb 2021 -but this was again cancelled as AUS was not open to visitors until July 2022 (IIRC)

So now they want to go to AUS on these cancelled flights.

Unsurprisingly QANTAS are not playing game and say they can either have a refund (£100 each) or pay for a new flight (£££££££££)

SO:_
Surely they are entitled to a flight under EC261 ?

How do they escalate their request to someone who actually knows the Eu261 rules?

Thanks

[dougzz99]

They either do a little research themselves or hire a professional. Alternatively they could get third hand information from a bloke down the pub, that tends to be reliable.

[Notmyrealname]

WTF?

[NorthernLass]

I think Doug means that this information is already accessible on various threads in this forum!

[JDB]

Although strictly speaking it shouldn’t matter, the fact your friend has left it to now to seek to rebook won’t help their case. Also the fact it was a £100 ticket not generally available to the public may mean that EC261 doesn’t apply.

[Matt]

If they’ve paid for it with avios, pounds or anything else then EU261 applies – it’s only truly free tickets where it doesn’t apply.

That doesn’t mean it’s going to be possible or easy to get Qantas to co-operate – they’re a long way from Europe and it’s a long time since Australia opened and since the flight was scheduled.

[NorthernLass]

I don’t think that’s the case – there are hugely discounted staff tickets which don’t qualify for EU261, for example. I don’t know what the £100 fare was.

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

Matt wrote:

If they’ve paid for it with avios, pounds or anything else then EU261 applies – it’s only truly free tickets where it doesn’t apply.

That’s not correct. It does not apply to tickets that aren’t available to the general public.

So it wouldn’t apply for example to discounted staff tickets even if the staffer paid any sort of cash element.

Article 3.3 –

This Regulation shall not apply to passengers travelling free of charge or at a reduced fare not available directly or indirectly to the public. However, it shall apply to passengers having tickets issued under a frequent flyer programme or other commercial programme by an air carrier or tour operator.

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

I don’t know all the background to these tickets but rereading the HFP article it does appear they were available on a first come first served basis via the QF website as part of their birthday celebrations so IMHO that counts as being publicly available so in scope of EU/UK 261 – unless someone than show otherwise.

OPs friends will likely need to take QF to MCOL (they aren’t a participant in a UK based arbitration scheme) about this but QF will likely raise in their defence the conditions of carriage and ticket validity and that it’s not feasible to keep a ticket open for an endless period of time.

People have had hit and miss experience with this with BA with some people winning and some not so it’s not a slam dunk.

There are literally dozens of threads on this topic in the BA and Flight disruption fora so OP should have a look for those and apply the knowledge there to making a claim against QF.

But initially they should send a properly worded and formatted email to QF customer relations (or whatever they are called) quoting the specific articles under the 261 regulation as well as giving specific dates they want to fly and not some airy fairy period or vague mentions of “rights”.

[Notmyrealname]

BA Flyer IHG Stayer wrote:

I don’t know all the background to these tickets but rereading the HFP article it does appear they were available on a first come first served basis via the QF website as part of their birthday celebrations so IMHO that counts as being publicly available so in scope of EU/UK 261 – unless someone than show otherwise.

OPs friends will likely need to take QF to MCOL (they aren’t a participant in a UK based arbitration scheme) about this but QF will likely raise in their defence the conditions of carriage and ticket validity and that it’s not feasible to keep a ticket open for an endless period of time.

People have had hit and miss experience with this with BA with some people winning and some not so it’s not a slam dunk.

There are literally dozens of threads on this topic in the BA and Flight disruption fora so OP should have a look for those and apply the knowledge there to making a claim against QF.

But initially they should send a properly worded and formatted email to QF customer relations (or whatever they are called) quoting the specific articles under the 261 regulation as well as giving specific dates they want to fly and not some airy fairy period or vague mentions of “rights”.

Thank you for a sensible reply.

I appreciate there are loads in the BA forum but this is QANTAS so not exactly the same. Plus this ticket is a long time overdue. The first opportunity they could have used it was when AUS opened to tourists which IIRC was around JULY 2022

Travel at that time was not convenient for them so they did not enquire about it then.

I will look at the BA trheads and cobble together somthing.

Thanks again for a sensible and helpful reply.

BTW
You are correct the tickets were heavily discounted but were available to the general public via their web-site. You just had to be lucky to get one.

I did-and used it
Rhys did-and used it
My friends did but literally missed the outbound due to Coivd

[Lady London]

Qantas was reported as simply having refused to refund across the board, for flights they cancelled through Covid. Passengers hadn’t cancelled them, Qantas had.

This went on for 2 years with literally millions of flights Qantas had cancelled still not refunded by Qantas, at least. And I’m still not sure everyone whose flight Qantas cancelled has got their money back, even today.

Qantas will doubtless arrogantly think you can’t claim on them in UK/Europe but I’m sure you can if you do what BAFIS suggests, proceed taking account of the advice across threads in HfP and keep at it.

Australia is a long haul trip, a big undertaking for many people, and it could well have taken you time within your own circumstances to have identified dates which are convenient to travel. So ask for those and press ahead.

[StillintheSun]

Here are two topics showing the views of various posters on here. The law will be the same but as ever you will need to adapt the facts. Happy reading.

https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/victory-over-ba-at-cedr-on-ticket-validity-issue/

https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/cedr-loss-ba-ticket-validity-rule/

[Blindman67]

Lady London wrote:

Qantas was reported as simply having refused to refund across the board, for flights they cancelled through Covid. Passengers hadn’t cancelled them, Qantas had.

This went on for 2 years with literally millions of flights Qantas had cancelled still not refunded by Qantas, at least. And I’m still not sure everyone whose flight Qantas cancelled has got their money back, even today.

Qantas will doubtless arrogantly think you can’t claim on them in UK/Europe but I’m sure you can if you do what BAFIS suggests, proceed taking account of the advice across threads in HfP and keep at it.

Australia is a long haul trip, a big undertaking for many people, and it could well have taken you time within your own circumstances to have identified dates which are convenient to travel. So ask for those and press ahead.

Thanks

[meta]

They also need to be prepared to answer why they waited for more than six months to book. Yes, the first opportunity was in July 2022, but they could have called around that time and get it booked for up to a year later.

If they are to proceed with letter before action (and it really needs to be that not just a simple letter otherwise it’s prolonging the whole thing), they also need Qantas service address in the UK. It needs to be sent with tracked signed for delivery. It’s best to quote relevant regulations and stick to facts. You also need to state what are you seeking as a resolution.

It’s all been said here ad nauseam not just for BA, but for Virgin, Easyjet, Ryanair, ANA, JAL you name it. It’s all the same principle and logic.

[JDB]

Australia reopened in February last year and the OP’s friend doesn’t appear to have made any contact or rebooking with Qantas so this ticket is now very stale, the fare was basically zero plus taxes/fees (per HfP at the time) so is arguably not eligible for UK261 and Qantas doesn’t participate in arbitration here so it will probably have to go to MCOL with the attendant fees. They will need to persuade a judge that this a rerouting at the passenger’s convenience rather than an entirely different trip. Not an easy one.

[JDB]

StillintheSun wrote:

Here are two topics showing the views of various posters on here. The law will be the same but as ever you will need to adapt the facts. Happy reading.

https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/victory-over-ba-at-cedr-on-ticket-validity-issue/

https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/cedr-loss-ba-ticket-validity-rule/

Qantas is quite unlikely to rebook these flights voluntarily and doesn’t participate in any arbitration scheme in the UK so the OP’s friend will need to issue proceedings at MCOL with the attendant court fee of £80-£115 depending on the cost of replacement tickets claimed plus a hearing fee of £123-£181 if Qantas contests the claim. There was the suggestion on HfP at the time of the QF promotion that the fare was zero and the reduced price made up of taxes/fees. It’s at least arguable that the fare isn’t eligible for EC261 and the ‘staleness’ of the original ticket with the poster’s friend seemingly having taken no steps to contact or rebook although Australia reopened a year ago will make this harder.

[Blindman67]

StillintheSun wrote:

Here are two topics showing the views of various posters on here. The law will be the same but as ever you will need to adapt the facts. Happy reading.

https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/victory-over-ba-at-cedr-on-ticket-validity-issue/

https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/cedr-loss-ba-ticket-validity-rule/

Thanks for the links

[Lady London]

It’s certainly going to be interesting. Basically Qantas made a commercially available offer to the public at a total purchase cost that Qantas set, for their own commercial purposes.

They then withdrew the flight they had sold to the customer. I’m sure Qantas failed to inform the customer of their rights at that time which they are supposed to do under the text of EU261, and no rerouting was offered so Qantas also failed there.

It’s actually not unknown for flights to be sold with the component the airline calls “fare” to be a negative value, ie below zero. I’ve seen it quite a few times with BA flights, actually, where it seems that to make a headline price that competes on a route, BA has manipulated the fare construction (ie their list of conponents that make up the total end price the fare is being sold at to the customer) within their fare calculation, so the ‘fare’ component within the total price, has gone negative.

@SamG may know more about this. ISTR seeing it on some ex-EU fares from Paris to US (not just BA ISTR, I think Skyteam on OTA), and on some Transatlantic London-West Coast, 2018-2019 or so when I last intensively searched those but I am sure it still happens. So it might be worth finding a fare or two like this to have an an example where a fare is still commercially sold at an overall price to the public even though it looks like the profit element of that fare isn’t there.

(It does make sense as every fare sold contributes to covering overheads, but that’s another topic.)

[StillintheSun]

I’m only dipping into HFP at the moment as I’m in beautiful South Africa.

However, @Lady London’s post above has given me an idea. The failure to inform a passenger of their EC rights is a breach of Article 14. Therefore in circumstances where the airline continues to fail to inform then the airline is in continuous breach of the Regs. Thus the date of the breach extends from the cancellation until the passenger is informed of their rights. Thus an airline cannot rely on a passenger’s delay in exercising those rights when the airline is still in breach under Article 14. A delay by the punter is only relevant after the airline has informed them appropriately of their rights thus any delay by the punter cannot run and be relevant until the Article 14 information has been provided by the airline.

Please blame the wine tram if there are more typos than usual.

[JDB]

There isn’t any evidence the passenger wasn’t informed of his/her rights. They will have received an email in 2020 which was quite probably compliant and in any event understood enough from that communication to rebook once for 2021 when they presumably received a second cancellation email, at which point they apparently chose to do nothing until 2023 and it’s now almost a year since the country reopened (in Feb 2022, not July). Having rebooked once, claiming ignorance/a breach of Article 14 now as a reason for the two year delay in rebooking or apparently making any contact with the airline is a poor argument.

[hugol0ver]

Just reading the chat thread’s from the past week to see if there’s anything interesting and this delay (not even canx!) message from Icelandic carrier PLAY is perhaps the most compliant and honest EC/UK261 message I’ve ever seen. I cannot imagine BA sending this. Even more, PLAY are not a Community carrier, just like Qantas.

https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/chat-thread-monday-6th-february/#post-451763

Please read the following information carefully. You can choose to:
(1) travel at a later date of your choosing for no additional cost to the same destination; (2) You can also cancel your travel and receive a full refund of the affected flight, or
(3) a full refund on all unused flights in the booking;
(4) You can also choose to receive your refund in the form of a PLAY gift voucher where a 10% bonus amount calculated from your original airfare will be added to the voucher for the affected flight; or
(5) receive your refund in the form of a PLAY gift voucher where a 10% bonus amount calculated from your original airfare will be added to the voucher for all unused flights in the booking.
(6)You can also choose to travel on your original departure time. Information related to EU regulation 261/2004 regarding passenger rights can be found here

[JDB]

To be fair to BA, the most recent cancellation email I received (on 22 December) is brief but has a very clear link to

https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/legal/flight-cancellation-compensation

It makes sense to have a link rather than attempting to put all the info in the email and it is in no way hidden.

[hugol0ver]

They copy verbatim from the Regulation.

“Passengers whose flight is cancelled, shall have the choice of either

Re-routing, under comparable transport conditions, to the final destination of the ticket presented at check-in at the earliest opportunity or at a later date at the passenger’s convenience, subject to availability; or”

“You can travel at a later date of your choosing, at no additional cost, to the same destination” (as PLAY put it) is easier to understand and makes it clear its free.

And to be fair to BA they do have the courage to put in writing that “later date of your choosing” (as PLAY put it) is -3/+14 days and we can assume the CAA/CMA is quite happy with that with it being public information.

https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/traveltrade/bookings-policies/policies/standard-customer-guidelines

There’s a link to the PLAY ones too.

[StillintheSun]

I’m sorry @JDB but you seem to want it both ways:
You say that the causal relevancy does not matter when BA’s conditions of carriage would have meant that BA would have refused the requested re-route even had it been made the day following the cancellation as opposed to the request that was made 5 months later.
Now you suggest that it is causally relevant to Article 14 whether or not the passenger was aware of his cancellation rights.
It is a perfectly standard argument in many areas of law that where a defendant is in continuous breach of a duty, that any dereliction by the other side is of limited relevance when the breach has not been remedied.

The problem is @jdb is you can do a high level analysis of the EC Flight Regs in isolation but as a man in finance your knowledge of principles that extend across the law and influence each individual case is much more limited. Some general assertions that you make on here are just plain wrong. For example, it is utterly incorrect to assert that a district judge in a small claims case will place significant reliance or indeed any reliance on the decision of CEDR. Secondly, the plain wording of the CPR in Part 27 says that adverse costs in small claims may be awarded if a party has behaved “unreasonably.” This appears to indicate that such awards may be made relatively often. Those in practice will know that such awards, especially against unrepresentative litigants are very unusual and certainly would not occur in circumstances that you frighten people with on here.

Usually there needs to be some pretty poor, wilful misconduct. For example a hearing is scheduled to take place remotely and the claimant is sent a copy of the hearing notice which expressly states that the claimant must have a copy of the trial bundle and a quiet, private place to attend the trial. At the allotted time the claimant, a repair man is out on a job with no trial bundle and so the trial could not proceed. He would be at risk of a costs order in these circumstances but even so many DJs would “wimp out” in making one. DJs really do not like to hand out such orders against the man on the street on the small claims track because the philosophy of that track is to provide access to justice to determine low level disputes. handling out such orders would act as a coolant on the practical operation of that policy.

All I am doing is setting out different ways to defeat the consumer delay argument in the wider legal sense that a DJ would be familiar with. I think there are about 4 or 5 now which each person will need to make a decision if relevant to their own case.

Final this post is to do with Qantas, not BA. If Qantas have cancelled especially cheap flights on a massive scale they well have completely failed to inform consumers of their EC rights. I know not, only the affected passenger can go though their documentation and determine the same and the date it occurred.

Finally it remains to be seen if a non-specific link to a webpage setting out in a general way `EC Rights is sufficient under Article 14 given the pro-consumer nature of the Regs. Certainly it may not be especially when compared to other carriers such as mentioned by @hugol0ver

Anyway time for Brekky with a view 🙂

[JDB]

@StillintheSun according to BA very few cases lost at CEDR are then pursued at MCOL which isn’t very surprising. More lost FOS cases are pursued in court although they are different in that they often rely on technical arguments, rather than the usually more subjective decisions of CEDR and many of those FOS ones are anyway outside the £10k small claims track. Both are unusual in that they effectively allow a second bite of the cherry/reconsideration as opposed to an appeal which does not.

Where BA does defend such cases they press this hard as an abuse of process (and seek costs), say the claimant is rehashing old arguments that have already been determined by an aviation specialist arbitrator etc. whereas they are normally firm but professional and don’t press for costs. A local DJ described the CEDR decision as being of magnetic importance.

Re costs against the claimant, yes they are very much the exception rather than the rule but the CofA decision in Dammermann v Lanyon Bowdler LLP [2017] EWCA Civ 269 at 31 makes it clear that litigants in person should not be treated differently from represented parties and defendants will remind the court of this, as I’m sure you would if defending.

The most common reasons for award of costs are rejection of good offers, opposing set aside applications, unreasonably opposing strike out applications (ie obviously hopeless case) as well as refusal to engage properly with the defendant or repeated failure to comply with orders/directions.

The problem is that many people pursue cases with arguments that make sense to them but don’t really have a basis in law or they just pursue them on principle because they are consumed by a perceived injustice.