Australian travel company Bestjet’s collapse hits thousands of customers over the holidays
- The budget airfare company, which has links to a failed airline run by the former owner’s husband, went into voluntary administration on December 18
Travellers who booked flights through Australian budget airfare company Bestjet have been left thousands of dollars out of pocket after the business collapsed just days before Christmas.
Queensland-based Bestjet and its subsidiaries, Wynyard Travel and Brooklyn Travel, went into voluntary administration on December 18. The news has left thousands of Australians angry and unsure of whether they’ll ever see their money again.
Neil Hall and his wife, Annette, paid A$10,600 (US$7,440) for two business class flights from Brisbane to Milan with Etihad on December 11. They had never flown business class before, and decided to splash out after Neil was made redundant.
The couple received a tax receipt and assumed the flight had been paid for – until December 22 when a strange email landed in their inbox.
Purporting to be from Bestjet, it was littered with spelling errors and accusations aimed at airfare ticketing consolidator CVFR Travel Group.
The company’s administrator, Pilot Partners, sent an email to customers soon afterwards advising them to ignore any “unauthorised information”.
I was furious, it seems like a scam to me