Aviation

Budget airline Jetstar has been hit with a class action on behalf of hundreds of thousands of customers who were credited with travel vouchers for flights cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic but were allegedly owed a refund.

Bonza creditors voted Tuesday to wind up the budget airline after its administrators at Hall Chadwick ran an “extensive sales campaign” but received no offers to purchase the collapsed airline.

The administrators for budget airline Bonza have found it likely traded while insolvent in the lead-up to its voluntary administration, suggesting the airline’s directors may have breached their duties under the Corporations Act. 

The High Court has dismissed an appeal of a decision which found Indonesia’s national airline could avail itself of foreign state immunity to defeat a winding up application.

Qantas argues it has “no legal responsibility” to compensate baggage handlers who, the High Court has found, the airline unlawfully sacked and replaced with contractors, partly to prevent them from engaging in industrial action.

The law firm behind a class action over cancelled Qantas flights has confirmed the case continues despite a $120 million settlement with the consumer regulator, and has called on the airline to follow through on its pledge to restore customers’ confidence.

A judge has refused to allow a female pilot to bring claims that Qantas engaged in sex discrimination because it had a culture that was “hostile to women”, saying that while the ‘vibe’ of a claim might suffice in the court of public opinion, it could not survive in a court of record.

A judge has expressed concerns that measures implemented to deal with the large number of Bonza creditors expected at the first creditors meeting on Friday unintentionally “foreclosed” on their right to vote to replace Hall Chadwick as administrators.

Budget Australian airline Bonza owes almost 58,000 customers, 320 employees and 130 suppliers after it was put into voluntary administration last week when aircraft lessors claimed the airline was in default and grounded its planes, a court has heard. 

Qantas will pay a $100 million penalty and another $20 million in compensation in a settlement of the ACCC’s so-called ghost flights case that includes an admission by the airline that it engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in selling tickets for cancelled flights.