About 100 passengers were standed on Monday night at Canberra Airport when Jetstar cancelled its direct flight to the Gold Coast.

JQ 651 was scheduled to leave about 4pm Monday but was delayed.

By 8:30pm Monday the plane finally arrived at the gate but it was nothing more than a tease for waiting passengers who were then told the flight was cancelled because the crew was too tired and had exhausted their work hours.

Jetstar ground staff advised passengers to phone reservations for alternate flights.  However,  reservations had closed for the night.

Airline staff were powerless to help except to say “call them in the morning”.

Police then converged on the passengers who lined up to get help as part of the airline’s “Recovery” process.

Staff promised the passengers hotel accommodation at Jetstar’s expense and the airline would pay for taxi travel to and from the hotel.

However, a form of extortion was later discovered when Jetstar would only pay the taxi fare if the customer would agree to not cancel the ticket.   This extortion was not mentioned when the reimbursement offer was made.

Jetstar doesn’t operate daily flights making rebooking attempts disasterous.

NOTE: The author was one of the impacted passengers and witnessed events first hand.

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