Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce is set to resign ahead of schedule amid allegations the Australian airline sold tickets for thousands of already-cancelled flights.
Joyce had previously planned to retire in November, but instead agreed on Tuesday to take effect on September 6. As previously planned, Vanessa Hudson will succeed Joyce as CEO.
“The focus on Qantas and past events over the past few weeks has made it clear that the company must prioritise renewal,” Joyce said in a prepared statement. “The best thing I can do in these circumstances is to bring forward my retirement.”
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission filed suit against Qantas in the Federal Court of Australia on August 31, claiming the airline continued to sell tickets for more than 8,000 flights between May and July 2022 despite the airline canceling them.
According to the ACCC, cancelled flights were sold on Qantas’ website for an average of more than two weeks. It also alleged that Qantas failed to notify ticket holders for more than 10,000 flights scheduled for July 2022 that their flights had been cancelled. The average delay in notification was 18 days.
ACCC chairwoman Gina Cass-Gottlieb said Qantas' failure to provide ticket holders with information about cancelled flights “left customers with insufficient time to arrange alternative travel and potentially resulted in them paying higher prices without realising that their flight had already been cancelled at some point.”
On Monday, Qantas issued an apology to customers.
“The period of mid-2022, to which the ACCC’s claims relate, was a time of widespread turbulence and uncertainty across the aviation industry as Qantas struggled to restart post-COVID,” the airline said. “We publicly acknowledge that our service standards fell significantly short and we sincerely apologise. We have been working hard to address this since then and that work continues.”
