Qantas shutdown: international passengers get $250 travel voucher

One month on from Qantas' dramatic 48-hour shutdown, the airline is offering a $250 travel voucher as additional compensation to stranded travellers who purchased tickets outside of Australia.

The voucher contains "the equivalent of A$250 in local currency as stored credit for future travel on Qantas", a Qantas spokeswoman confirmed to Australian Business Traveller.

The sweetener comes on top of fare refunds, flexible re-booking options, bonus Frequent Flyer points and reimbursements for accommodation, meals and other related expenses "offered to our customers who reside outside Australia and who purchased their tickets outside Australia".

(However, stranded passengers who booked their Qantas tickets overseas were not eligible for the massive free flight give-away.)

Travellers booked on cancelled Qantas flights out of Heathrow and Frankfurt are also eligible to receive an additional €600 (around A$790) under Europe’s ‘air passenger rights’ law EC 261/2004, which requires airlines to pay passengers in the event that a flight departing from an airport within the European Union is cancelled.

The amount payable depends on the distance, from €250 for flights of 1,500km or less through to the maximum of €600 for flights greater than 3,500km.

“Qantas will be providing compensation to those customers who were disrupted out of Europe as required by European Commission legislation” an airline spokeswoman confirmed.

(For more details on Qantas' obligations under EC 261/2004, visit qantas.com's Key Conditions of Carriage web page.)

Qantas has opted not to issue a press release on this, nor share the information on its public Industry Sales web page for travel agents or @qantasmedia Twitter channel – the airline says it is contacting affected passengers directly.