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Qantas dismisses conspiracy theories about last week’s shut-down
Qantas will reveal on Monday how it intends to compensate passengers whose travel plans were disrupted by the airline’s decision last weekend to ground its entire fleet.
Chief executive Alan Joyce said that the airline would compensate its customers “above and beyond” recommendations made by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
“It was always our intention, and you’ll see on Monday what we’re doing,” he told a Senate enquiry.
Joyce told the enquiry that it was “a mistake” to continue taking flight bookings from customers after the fleet was grounded.
Online bookings were stopped at 8.30pm (AEDT) on Saturday – more than three hours after the grounding – when management realised its website had not been taken down.
Joyce said there were many conspiracy theories going around that Qantas was preparing for the grounding before the decision was made on Saturday morning.
But they weren’t true, he said. It was not true that Qantas had booked 2000 hotel rooms in Los Angeles before the shutdown decision was made.
“There were no more hotel rooms booked before this than would have normally been booked on a standard operation,” Joyce told the hearing.
by TravelMole Asia
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Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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