Your Rights Under the Australian Consumer Law
This page provides an overview of your rights under the consumer guarantee provisions of the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) where your flight is delayed or cancelled. It is not a statement of the only rights that may be available to you under the ACL (or any other law) and we recommend that you refer to the ACCC website or obtain independent legal advice for further information.
All bookings and travel are subject to our Conditions of Carriage and Fare Rules applicable to your booking. Nothing in our Conditions of Carriage or Fare Rules affects your rights under the ACL.
Consumer guarantees and your right to a remedy under the ACL
The ACL contains guarantees which provide consumers with a basic, guaranteed level of protection for services that they acquire, including:
- guarantee as to due care and skill;
- guarantee as to fitness for a particular purpose; and
- guarantee as to reasonable time for supply.
If we fail to live up to any of these consumer guarantees for a relevant service we provide, you may be entitled to a remedy under the ACL. If the breach of the consumer guarantees cannot be remedied or amounts to a major failure, you are entitled to a refund or other remedies under the ACL.
You may also be entitled to compensation for reasonably foreseeable losses caused by the failure.
A major failure occurs when a reasonable consumer would not have purchased the services had they known about the extent of the failure or the where the service is substantially unfit for purpose and cannot be fixed within a reasonable time.
Flight delays or cancellations
We are committed to getting you to your destination on time, however sometimes bad weather, natural disasters, technical problems, operational and other issues can cause flight delays and cancellations. Your safety is always our first priority and while we will try our best to provide our service in accordance with the estimated departure and arrival time of your flight, flight times are not guaranteed.
We recommend that you carefully consider your travel requirements when booking your flight with us and allow extra time in your travel plans in case there are unexpected changes to your flight, particularly if your travel is to attend a scheduled event or you have onward travel plans with a third party service provider. Travel insurance is recommended.
If a delay or cancellation occurs, we will provide you with assistance as set out here – Compensation and Refunds. Depending on the circumstances, this may include a refund and/or other compensation.
You may also be entitled under the ACL to a refund and/or compensation following a delay or cancellation if this constitutes a breach of the consumer guarantees.
Whether there has been a breach of the consumer guarantees depends on the circumstances and we consider a range of factors in determining whether our services were provided in accordance with the consumer guarantees, including:
- the reason for the delay or cancellation, for example whether it was caused by us* or by someone or something else^;
- the length of any delay; and
- whether we remedied the delay or cancellation, for example by reaccommodating you on another flight within a reasonable time (which will depend on the circumstances and may not be the same each time you travel).
Jetstar is not required to provide you with a refund because you have changed your mind for any reason. However, you may be able to refund in these circumstances depending upon the Fare Rules for your booking.
Claiming a refund or other compensation
If you wish to claim a refund and/or other compensation, please contact Customer Care.
If you are entitled to a refund, the refund will be equal to the fare paid if no part of the ticket is used. If part of the ticket is used, the refund will be equal to the difference between the fare paid and the fare that would have been payable if booked for the travel taken.
*Delay or cancellation within our control includes engineering issues, Jetstar IT system outages, delayed delivery of baggage to the carousel due to resourcing issues, late cleaning/loading of catering to the aircraft, crew/staffing issues or any other circumstance which we can reasonably control.
^Delay or cancellation outside our control includes weather events, air traffic control issues, industrial action by a third party, security issues or any other unusual and unforeseen circumstances which we cannot control and the consequences of which we could not have avoided.