Qantas App crashes after $50 flight discount offer goes live

The Aussie airline’s website crashed after frequent flyer members rushed to redeem their $50 “apology” voucher — leaving many furious.

Qantas’ website crashed today after frequent flyer members rushed to redeem their $50 “apology” voucher.

Australia’s largest airline issued the travel credit to its millions of members in a desperate attempt to revive its brand following an increase in complaints.

However, when trying to log onto the airline’s website on Monday to redeem the voucher, some members were met with an error message that read: “We are unable to process this request currently. Please try again later”.

“What a joke from @Qantas – now the olive branch apology has stuffed up with the Qantas App crashing for people trying to accept the apology offer of $50 flight discounts,” TV presenter Deborah Knight wrote in a scathing Twitter post.

“Website too and logged me out of both,” another person added.

One frustrated frequent flyer member shared a photo of an error message, revealing they were unable to login while trying to claim the“apology discount”.

What a joke from @Qantas - now the olive branch apology has stuffed up with the Qantas App crashing for people trying to accept the apology offer of $50 flight discounts.

— Deborah Knight (@deborah_knight) August 22, 2022

“Ahh is that what it is. Been trying to log on to book a flight,” another person asked.

While many were clearly annoyed by the crashing of the site, others defended the airline for “trying”.

“Give them a break every man and his dog are trying to connect with the app, I’m waiting 24 hours before I try,” one person wrote.

News.com.au understands that due to the huge number of visits to the frequent flyer website today, the site experienced a couple of outages and the airline is working to fix the issue with the site expected to be back up and running shortly.

Meanwhile, all other functions such as searching flights, booking flights and changing flights appear to be working.

@qantas emails an apology/not an apology for the shitshow that is travelling with @qantas currently. When attempting to login to claim the apology discount, they were unable to process my login request pic.twitter.com/gGoz9vKX5R

— Tan (@TanGrids) August 22, 2022

How ironic.
On the first day travellers want to use the apology credit from @qantas the app crashes, the website glitches. And ppl are left doubly frustrated.

— Jonathan Lea (@JonathanLea10) August 22, 2022

In a statement issued on Sunday, Qantas said it would give the majority of its 14 million members $50 in travel credit for a return flight of their choosing as a way of saying “thank you” for their patience and commitment to the airline during its post-Covid recovery.

In the last six months, the flying kangaroo has copped criticism for baggage mishandling, staff shortages and increased flight cancellations as flights return to pre-pandemic levels.

But on Sunday, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce apologised to customers for the inconvenience caused by the airline’s unideal service.

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Qantas CEO, Alan Joyce apologised to customers. Picture: NCA NewsWire / John Gass

“We know the return to flying hasn’t gone smoothly. Over the past few months too many of you have had flights delayed, flights cancelled or bags misplaced,” Mr Joyce said in a video, that was directed to customers in an email on Monday.

“There are good reasons why, but when it comes to what you expect from Qantas, it’s not good enough.”

He also announced that the airline had recruited 1500 staff since April and has adjusted rosters and schedules to overcome a 50 per cent jump in employees taking sick leave.

Following the apology, the Union National Secretary, Michael Caine called on Mr Joyce to resign.

He lashed the decision, labelling the move as “Alan Joyce at his absolute worst”.

The Qantas app and website crashed due to the high volume of members trying to redeem their voucher. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

“No, what’s needed is Alan Joyce to resign and for the federal government to put in place a safe and secure skies commission and an independent body that can make decisions in aviation in the publics interest,” he told ABC radio on Monday morning.

Finally! A perfectly timed @Qantas arrival! My apology email from Alan Joyce perfectly timed with a frequent flyer website outage! Bravo! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

— Jeremy Coombes (@jeremycoombes) August 22, 2022

“You can’t buy off forgiveness, what you’ve got is a company that has been smashing workers for years now, most recently when it outsourced nearly 2,000 workers during the pandemic, you know we could really have done with those 2,000 experienced workers when we were trying to get aviation back up and running,” he said.

According to federal government data, the airline lost $1.2 billion in the first half of the 2022 financial year, with multiple Covid lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne to blame.

Staffing shortages due to Covid-19 and flu cases has also created challenges for the airline, leading to a request from the airline to ask senior executives and managers to step down from their usual roles to assist ground staff.

However, Mr Joyce said that cancellations between June to July have dropped from 8.1 per cent to 6.5 per cent. “We’re already seeing a sustained improvement in baggage handling and on-time performance and while factors out of our control like weather can have an impact on our schedule, we expect things to keep improving each week,” Mr Joyce said.