When booking an airline ticket, the times are quite important. You need to get to the airport before the flight and you want to arrive on time, as you might have people meeting you or plans post-flight.

I recently did a flight search with Australia’s Qantas and came across the most intriguing note across the top of the screen. Written in bold, it surprised me quite a bit.

Want To Arrive On Time? Well, Maybe!

The message on the web site reads, “We will do our best to get you where you want to be on time, but we don’t guarantee flight times or schedules and they aren’t part of our contract with you.”

While I am sure this is perfectly true, I looked at this in disbelief. It seems to be a very customer unfriendly thing to put on a web site, right where people are about to purchase a ticket.


Without any basis in fact, I am guessing that this is in response to the pandemic. Having worked in telephone customer service, I am quite aware that some Australians are exceptionally rude to customer service staff when things are not going their way.

No doubt people have been effing and blinding at Qantas for cancelled flights or changes to flight schedules and this is the response. “Buy a ticket with us, but don’t blame us if you don’t arrive on time – it’s not in our contract of carriage”.

Overall Thoughts

It is not unreasonable to expect that a flight will arrive on time. Indeed, the message does say that Qantas will “do our best to get you where you want to be on time”, which is something all airlines do.

Operational issues do happen and then the airline will move you around to minimise the disruption. I get it. All of that being said, it is a strange thing to point out that “actually, we can do whatever we want with flight times”. It just seems a bit like a middle finger to customers in some ways.

What do you think of this message on the Qantas web site? Have you seen anything like it with another airline? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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