By Shannon Pitman, Open Justice reporter of 
Photo: AFP
Two frustrated Qantas passengers were forced to pay for their flights three times because of system errors, missing payments and the issuing of tickets with the wrong travel dates.
To make matters worse, their luggage didn't arrive on time with them when they landed and it took four months for the airline to refund for the ticket issue.
Now, Qantas has been ordered to pay Nikki Bohlmann and Leesa Jackson more than $4000 in compensation for the "very poor service" they received.
On 5 May, 2022, Bohlmann and Jackson paid $7246 for premium economy return flights to South Africa with Qantas but, because of an error, the airline failed to issue the tickets.
After calling the call centre, they rebooked the flights but were told a systems error had occurred and their payment had not been received.
The passengers were told to pay a third time to rebook the flights, but when this set of flights finally went through, they were issued with an incorrect return date that was out by a month.
Qantas said they would have to pay $163 for a date change but flights were now full on their original return date and they would have to extend their trip by three days.
The ticketing errors meant they spent more than 14 hours on the phone to a call centre and when they returned to Auckland, there was another issue to contend with: luggage that would not arrive in New Zealand until five days later.
Although the airline said it would refund the clients for the previous flights they had paid for that had not been issued, the money took four months to be returned.
Bohlmann and Jackson recently took Qantas to the Civil Court to claim $18,000 for compensation, loss of income and expenses incurred.
The passengers submitted their holiday was spoiled because of a lack of funds and provided evidence the extra three days abroad lost them a combined income of $22,610.
Qantas agreed to pay the date change fee and $1826 in expenses; however, disputes judicial officer Elizabeth Paton-Simpson was not convinced $22,000 was "the true loss" and the passengers could have made up the three lost work days elsewhere.
"Both are essentially self-employed and are likely to have had ways of making up three days' earnings if they wished.
"It would not be just for them to receive an extra three days' holiday with expenses paid as well as the earnings they would have made if they were not on holiday," the recent civil court decision said.
- This story first appeared in the New Zealand Herald
