Qantas’ defence misses the point, see you in court: ACCC chief

afr.com:

ACCC chairwoman Gina Cass-Gottlieb said Qantas’ “bundle of rights” defence does not answer the competition watchdog’s main lawsuit claim that the airline misled customers by selling tickets on cancelled flights, and signalled she will not back down from fighting the case in court.

In late August, the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission alleged Qantas had deceived customers when it sold tickets for more than 8000 flights that had already been cancelled and failed to tell customers who had bought tickets that they were cancelled for weeks.

Gina Cass-Gottlieb says the ACCC’s case comes down to what representations Qantas made to consumers. Alex Ellinghausen

In defence documents filed with the Federal Court this week, the airline rejected the basis of the ACCC case, arguing that customers were not buying a specific flight when they book to travel but instead a “bundle of rights” and the airline’s commitment “to do its best to get consumers where they want to be on time”.

But Ms Cass-Gottlieb said on Thursday the watchdog’s case did “not involve an alleged breach in relation to the actual decision about cancellation or whether Qantas had the contractual capacity to do so in the print that maybe some of you raise in relation to your ticket”.

Rather, its allegations were about “the representations that Qantas made to customers in the sale of the tickets and its conduct after it had cancelled the flights in view of those representations”, she told a conference in Melbourne.

Qantas advertising tickets to more than 8000 flights it had already decided to cancel was one such representation, as was its failure to notify existing ticket holders on more than 10,000 flights that their tickets had been cancelled for an average