Please note the topic heading has been updated. It reflects your opening question. The topic responses are applicable to similar instances of disruption irrespective of the airline or causes.
What are your rights and your options if you are affected by an airline strike?
I am travelling on Virgin to Japan next week, and Virgin staff have just voted for 24 hour stoppages. What do airlines do if you are affected by a strike? Is your flight cancelled? Are you put on a flight at a later date, and how many days later is typical? What are the options? Given I paid with points, I’m guessing I’ll be low priority.
Your first option is to refer to the T&C’s of the flight booking with Virgin. Virgin may try to provide an alternate flight, or offer a refund through a travel credit or other? But only once the action has impacted your flight as booked.
The ACCC offers guidance on consumer rights. Until such time as the actual flight has been directly impacted there are no options for remedy.
Some consumers may decide in advance to book an alternate flight to minimise the risk. Depending on whether the originally booked flight with Virgin is impacted and unreasonably delayed, the value of the Virgin flight may be lost. The alternative is to consider the likely impact due to change/s offered by Virgin if the strike affects your flight. This may be with minimal notice.
Note if you have already taken out travel insurance, you may may have cover (conditional) for costs due to the disruption from the strike action.
For any who have booked a higher class/level of seat, there may be options to cancel or change the booking in advance or on the day, EG full fare business class.
They can only fill empty seats so that depends on their load factors and thus is seasonal as well as related to the route. I agree with your guess they probably prioritise paying tickets at the expense of reward tickets unless (maybe not necessarily is) one is a years long platinum level frequent flyer.
Unfortunately this is a tactic of unions to create as much disruption as possible, including to customers of the business. This tactic is employed hoping that either customers ‘jump up and down’ or the businesses loses money, thus forcing the hand of a business to accept any conditions tabled by the unions.
If the points are credits given from flights cancelled in past years from Covid, you may not want a refund in points as it may limit your ability to use them in the future, particularly if they expire.
This means you have two options:
wait a see what Virgin offers in relation to the cancelled flight. Hopefully this is still acceptable for your travel plans to Japan
cancel the booking after carefully checking its implications. You need to check what it means when a customer instigates a cancellation. This should be outlined on the T&Cs attached to the booking and look for information on what happens to point bookings. Then book with another airline which may be more expensive and/or better suit your needs.
Travel insurance may be an option to explore as most policies will have cover where a strike wasn’t known at the time or booking and flight and at the time of taking cover. But, being paid using points where may be restrictions on whether such flights can be paid out as it is a way to convert point to cash - something they are unlikely to entertain. It might mean a call to your travel insurer to get advice before cancelling and making a claim under travel insurance.
Fortunately protected action is central to Australian IR legislation. It’s accepted as part of the enterprise bargaining process and legal. The two unions representing ground staff and cabin crew have both been granted permission to take strike action as part of enterprise bargaining for a new agreement. The previous agreement has lapsed.
The disruption (strikes) may or may not happen depending on the outcomes of ongoing negotiations between Virgin Australia the employer and the two unions with legal approval of exercising the right to stop work.
Note in response - Virgin/employers can retaliate by locking employees out without giving notice and for as long as they want.
If there is protected strike action (note 72hrs notice required) Virgin will be equally responsible. The timing of the current negotiations and rate of progress is in the hands of the business.
As to whether this is a suitable way to progress enterprise bargaining, consumers are likely divided according to political leaning.
@sydsim please let us know how you got on with this. Virgin should offer an alternative if your flight is affected. If not, most travel insurance policies usually cover for interruptions for strikes, and will work out a $ compensation equivalent for frequent flyer points. Check the fine print on your policy.
We’ve recently updated the travel insurance comparison to include insurer’s cover for strikes (under Covered Events).
So in the end my flight wasn’t affected by a strike, but rather by a cyclone. TC Jasper impacted Cairns airport and Virgin cancelled our flight to Tokyo. They had no capacity to move us, and told us we would have to make our own arrangements. Our points were refunded, but obviously last minute flights were very expensive. Given this was our first overseas family holiday in more than 10 years, and we had significant non-refundable costs in Japan, we paid over $9000 for 6 people to fly one way with Qantas to Tokyo. Luckily our credit card insurance was fantastic and refunded us the difference between the cost of the new flights and what Virgin valued our velocity points at, minus a $250 excess.
Hi @sydsim, thanks for the update. Your experiences demonstrates the importance of having travel insurance when travelling, whether for domestically or internationally.
We have often weighed up the travel risks and at times looked to the CC provider for their included cover. We’ve never needed to make a claim. Would you be able to share some more general details of how you went about making the claim and which CC provider was involved?
There are from memory preconditions with card companies such as American Express on what needs to be purchased in advance using your card to validate cover. Any advice based on your experience welcome.
That’s good to hear @sydsim . It’s a good example of where travel insurance fills the gap. Airlines usually don’t pay compensation for flights interrupted by natural disaster, but travel insurance does usually cover you for flights interrupted by natural disaster.
