Last night I had to book two flights from Sydney to the Gold Coast. The cheapest advertised price* for the connection we needed was via Jetstar on the Qantas site.
On the Qantas site, the price for two adults on a Jetstar flight was $243 (I have a screen grab of this price) including hand and 20kg check-in luggage. On hitting the ‘book’ button and a little window came up saying that as it was a Jetstar flight I would be redirected to Jetstar to make the booking, AND the flights and prices may change. There is no option to book through the Qantas site that I saw on several attempts.
Gave up and went through to the Jetstar site. Now the two seats on the flight was $198. BUT, to have the same luggage as included in the price on the Qantas site was an additional $80. So now we are at $278 on the Jetstar site for exactly the same.
By being forced over the Jetstar site, the price for two people on the same flight had increased by $35 over and above the advertised price on the Qantas site! Surely this is not acceptable to anyone except Qantas!!
Then of course were the extras like:
- ‘choose your seats’ preselected at $15 each (may be necessary if you want to sit together),
- meals and snacks starting at $9.50 each,
- a $2 donation to charity (pre-ticked), and
- expensive travel insurance (pre-ticked) at I think $25 each.
I thought that default pre-selection of options and trickle pricing was not permitted any more?
*(Please note that when checking pricing we logged on as members with both Qantas and Virgin)