Vietnam War veteran kicked out of Qantas business class seat for young employee

A 78-year-old war veteran travelling home to Adelaide claims he was booted out of his business class seat so a young airline employee could fly in luxury.

An elderly war veteran says he was kicked out of his business class seat so a young airline employee could fly business on Sunday.

Qantas customer Stephen Jones says he was left furious after he was forced to fly economy despite purchasing a business class ticket.

“I don’t think anything is going to change until there’s ramifications for Qantas when they upset their customers,” Mr Jones told 3aw Radio.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce unveiled a $1.43bn half-year profit for the airline and new business and first class seats for A350-1000s joining the fleet in 2025 – but has now brought forward his retirement to begin this week.

The Vietnam War veteran – whose complaint comes amid news Qantas boss Alan Joyce will leave his role two months early – was travelling with his wife from Christchurch in New Zealand, where they spent 12 days, back to Adelaide via Melbourne.

They both purchased business class tickets for the entire journey.

Mr Jones was told 30 minutes before the Australian leg of his flight he’d been “bumped” to an economy seat.

“I didn’t register at first, I wasn’t quite sure what bumped means,” he said.

A Qantas employee told the 78-year-old a “tech” was going to be joining the flight who had stipulations in their contract requiring them to fly business class.

A Qantas business class cabin on the Airbus A380-800.

The “tech” sat next to Mr Jones’ wife the entire flight and “didn’t look at her”.

When Mr Jones landed he wrote a complaint letter to Qantas and received a response the next day which he said “was rather quick”.

“As a good will gesture they’d offer me 5000 Qantas points,” Mr Jones said.

He thanked them for the ‘generous offer’ but declined.

Qantas responded to Mr Jones’ claim, saying one of their pilots needed to fly from Melbourne to Adelaide and as part of their enterprise agreement must fly business class.

“As the business cabin was full, unfortunately this meant that one customer was downgraded to economy, we’ve apologised to the customer and explained why the downgrade was necessary,” the Qantas statement said.

“When this happens we provide customers with a partial refund.”

Partner at Henderson Ball Lawyers, Justin Lawrence, explained how Qantas were allowed to be able to do what they did to Mr Jones, with a term called “involuntary downgrading”.