An elderly Vietnam veteran from Adelaide, Australia, was downgraded from his paid Qantas business class seat on Sunday so a young pilot could travel in luxury to South Australia’s capital.
Stephen Jones, 78, and his wife were in the Qantas lounge enjoying a coffee on their way home from a holiday in Christchurch on Sunday when they received the news, just 30 minutes before the final leg from Melbourne to Adelaide.
The reason was that a pilot needed to get to Adelaide to catch a flight and could only do so in business class under a business agreement.
Speaking to Melbourne’s 3AW, Mr Jones said he was offered 5,000 frequent flyer points and an apology after a letter of complaint.
An elderly Vietnam veteran was downgraded from his paid Qantas business class seat so a pilot could travel in luxury. Getty Images/ames D. Morga
He stated that the pilot who sat next to his wife “wasn’t looking at her.”
Mr Jones, who served in Vietnam in a combat unit in the 1960s, said he rejected the 5,000-point offer because “I don’t think anything is going to change until there are ramifications for Qantas, or costs for Qantas when to bother to his clients”.
According to Qantas, the pilot had a business agreement that stipulated he had to fly business class.
The reason was that a pilot needed to get to Adelaide to catch a flight and could only do so in business class under a business agreement. Getty Images/James D. Morgan
News.com.au understands that a flight from Adelaide may have been canceled if they were unable to get there.
Qantas confirmed it had apologized to Mr Jones and offers were offered, including a partial refund.
Justin Lawrence, a partner at Henderson Ball solicitors, later told 3AW there was little customers could do about such a move by the airline, saying it was “standard operating procedure”.
“Unfortunately, their transportation terms allow them to do this kind of thing; this happens so often that they even have a term for it, buckle up, and they call it ‘involuntary degradation,'” he said.
He claimed that the pilot who sat next to his wife “was not looking at her.” Getty Images
“They will overbook business class or first class, they will need to get someone out and they will do it almost immediately before the flight; not just Qantas, they all do it.
“Every time you go to a travel agent or Qantas online to buy a seat, and we think we are buying a seat in a particular class, there are no guarantees that when that plane takes off, you will be sitting in that class. class.”
Lawrence said that in Europe there is mandatory compensation for such downgrading, but that is not the case in Australia.
Jones said he understood that pilots had the right to rest comfortably on their way to another flight, but the ordeal was “unsettling and made me a little irritable.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn