Qantas ramps up war of words with Rex over refunds

Qantas has broken its silence over Rex’s claims the flying kangaroo has been withholding refunds from travellers.

A Rex Boeing 737 like those competing against Qantas on capital city routes. Picture: Supplied

A week after Rex escalated its war of words with Qantas with full page newspaper advertisements, the flying kangaroo has hit back against what it calls “false claims”.

The Rex ads called out Qantas for dragging its feet on refunds for passengers, highlighting dozens of negative social media posts from frustrated customers.

At the time Qantas said it “would not be drawn into a public slanging match” and its focus would remain on customers and employees.

But in a detailed post on the Qantas website, the airline individually addressed a number of claims made by Rex in recent weeks, from social media posts to ticket sales.

Qantas pointed out that while the airline was committed to transparency and working with customers to resolve issues, Rex had been caught deleting negative comments from its own social media pages.

“When asked about this … Rex said they did ‘not apologise’ for deleting comments they determined were ‘biased or unreasonable’,” said the Qantas response.

Since the start of the Covid-19 crisis, Qantas had assisted more than 2.5 million customers with impacted flights, with most refunds being processed within six to eight weeks, said the airline.

The statement also slapped down Rex’s suggestion Qantas was in financial strife, and denied they were preying on regional routes operated by the smaller carrier simply to hurt Rex.

Since the pandemic erupted early last year, Qantas has announced more than 30 new routes, including 10 also operated by Rex.

“We don’t start routes if we don’t think they will be commercially viable for us,” said the Qantas response.

“In fact, in the second half of calendar year 2020, 99 per cent of the time we were able to fly, we generated positive cashflow.”

The response noted that Qantas’ position was supported by Australian Consumer and Competition Commission chairman Rod Sims.

“(He) told a parliamentary inquiry in March: ‘if Qantas has the aircraft, it’s incurring the fixed costs, it realises it can make a cash contribution by flying somewhere – it’s a bit hard to call that predatory’.”

Qantas also denied receiving “special treatment” from the federal government throughout the pandemic, and insisted it had not sold tickets for international flights it never intended to operate.

The airline said very few tickets were sold on services scheduled to start on July 1, given the high uncertainty around the reopening of borders.

Since then the date has been pushed back twice, to late October and then to mid-December, despite federal budget predictions international travel would not resume until mid-2022.

Rex was expected to have more to say on the subject of Qantas but was “reviewing” the airline’s response on Friday.

The public spat between the two airlines has intensified since Rex launched flights on capital city routes, including Melbourne-Sydney, using former Virgin Australia 737s.

Considered one of the most lucrative routes in the world, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce angered Rex management by suggesting there was only room for two airline groups in the market.

Mr Joyce said Qantas and Jetstar would survive, so it would come down to either Rex or Virgin Australia who were offering very similar products.

Originally published as Qantas ramps up war of words with Rex over refunds