Stung by a raft of customer complaints, some of China’s biggest airlines have pulled their branded stores from travel company Qunar’s online marketplace.
Sichuan Airline joined Tianjin Airlines, Lucky Air, Air China, China Eastern Airlines , China Southern Airlines, Hainan Airlines and Capital Airlines in removing their stores from the site over how Qunar applies cancellation charges and how it informs customer of cancelled or delayed flights.
However Qunar disputes this and says the airlines’ want flight searches displayed differently.
"Recently China Southern and Hainan Airlines have insisted that we change the order of ticket displays on our website from an order by price to a chronological order. However, we think that displaying tickets by the order of their prices is more suited to the typical booking search habits of our users," Qunar said in a statement.
"As a result, we are ceasing our flagship store partnership for the time being but users can continue to purchase tickets on our site," it added.
Local media says there are at least nine major airlines which have closed their online stores on the Qunar website.
