Qantas agrees to pay $79 million after selling tickets for cancelled flights

Qantas

,

Australia

's national airline, said on Monday that it had reached a deal with the country's consumer watchdog to pay the equivalent of $79 million for selling thousands of

tickets

to

flights

that it had already

cancelled

.
The airline said in a statement that the payments, totalling 120 million Australian dollars, would resolve a lawsuit the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission filed against Qantas over the issue last year.

The commission accused the airline of advertising and selling tickets for over 8,000 cancelled flights from May 2021 through July 2022. The commission said Qantas had known that the flights would never take off, and that tickets remained available for an average of over two weeks after the flights were cancelled - in some cases, for as long as 47 days.
Qantas said it expected to pay 20 million Australian dollars in compensation to more than 86,000 of its customers, as well as a fine of 100 million dollars, subject to court approval.
The carrier's chief executive, Vanessa Husdon, also apologised for "failure to provide cancellation notifications in a timely manner". nyt