What to do if your flight is cancelled or delayed

Start with the correct frame, because most arguments at a service desk are lost by using the wrong one. A flight is a service, and services sold in Australia carry statutory consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law, which is Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. The relevant one here is short: services must be supplied within a reasonable time where no time frame was agreed. The ACCC applies that directly to travel, stating that consumer guarantees mean travel services will be provided within a reasonable time after being delayed or cancelled.

The coverage is wider than people assume. The ACCC's travel guidance says the guarantees reach domestic travel, international services departing Australia, and bookings made through Australian websites. A Sydney-to-Singapore ticket bought from an Australian carrier or an Australian booking site is inside the system; a purely offshore booking on a foreign carrier for a foreign sector generally is not.

The next thing to understand is what the airline has and has not promised you contractually. The ACCC's position is that conditions of carriage do not include a guarantee of flight times — the schedule is an intention, not a term. That is exactly why the consumer guarantee matters: it operates on top of the contract regardless of what the contract says about timetables, and it cannot be excluded by a term or a fare rule.

Then comes the distinction that decides who chooses the remedy. For services, the ACCC describes a major problem as one that creates an unsafe situation, or where the service cannot be used for its normal purpose and cannot easily be fixed within a reasonable time. Where the problem is major, the consumer chooses: cancel the contract and get a refund, or keep the contract and pay a lower price that takes the problem into account. Where it is minor, the business must fix the problem for free, and is not obliged to refund.

Applied to a flight, the question becomes whether the disruption defeated the purpose of the journey. A two-hour delay on a Melbourne-to-Brisbane leg with nothing scheduled at the other end is very likely a minor problem, remedied by putting you on the next service. A cancellation that lands you a day late for the wedding, the surgery, the cruise departure or the conference you flew for is a much stronger candidate for a major failure — because the service can no longer be used for its normal purpose, and moving you to a flight the following afternoon does not fix that.

Note that the refund the ACCC describes for a major service failure is not always the whole ticket price. Its wording is that the refund may not be a full refund, because the consumer needs to pay a reasonable amount for any work done so far. On a multi-sector itinerary where you flew the first leg and the second was cancelled, expect an argument about apportionment rather than a clean reversal of the fare.

Finally, the ACCC is explicit that this floor sits under everything else, not beside it. A consumer's rights under an airline compensation policy are on top of their rights under consumer guarantees, and an airline's policy cannot take away consumer guarantee rights. So a customer charter that offers a meal voucher after three hours is a supplement to the statutory position and never a substitute for it.

Get the reason in writing before you move. Ask the airline what caused the delay or cancellation and ask for it on the boarding-pass reissue, in the app message or by email. The reason is the hinge for everything afterwards: an operational or crew cause sits squarely inside the airline's control, while a weather event, an airport closure or a government restriction is the airline's defence. You will not resolve that argument at the desk, but you want the airline's own words on the record before its story has time to settle.

Take the rebooking, and take it early. Accepting a seat on the next available service does not surrender anything — the consumer guarantee is not extinguished by letting the airline try to fix the problem, and if the fix turns out to be inadequate the failure escalates. Queue position is genuinely valuable during a mass disruption, so join the queue and phone the airline at the same time, and use the app while you wait. Whichever channel answers first is the one you use.

If the airline cannot get you there in time and you buy your own replacement, say what you are doing before you do it. The ACCC's aviation guidance says that where flights are disrupted passengers may qualify for a replacement, a refund, or reimbursement of the cost of booking with another airline. That last limb is the one people forget exists. Tell the airline, in writing, that its proposed rebooking does not meet the guarantee, that you are mitigating by booking an alternative, and that you will be seeking reimbursement. A contemporaneous message is worth far more than the same argument made a month later.

Keep every receipt, and keep them in a form you can hand over. Meals, taxis, an airport hotel, a rebooked transfer, the parking you paid for at the wrong airport, the extra night the tour operator charged. Photograph the departure board showing the cancellation, and screenshot the app notification with its timestamp. A claim supported by dated evidence is settled by a case officer; a claim supported by recollection is refused by a template.

Ask for meals and accommodation at the counter rather than assuming they are not available. Most large airlines publish a compensation or disruption policy that offers refreshments, a hotel room or a transfer after a defined delay, and the ACCC's position is that those policies add to your statutory rights rather than replacing them. Take the voucher, and keep claiming separately for what it did not cover. What you should not take, while you are still in the terminal and under pressure, is a travel credit — ground staff process credits because it is the fastest button available to them, and a credit is far harder to convert into cash later than a refund is to request in the first place.

Before you leave the airport, write down the flight number and scheduled time, the time the disruption was announced, the name or staff number of whoever you dealt with, and what you were offered. That note plus the receipts is the evidentiary basis of a claim you may not decide to make for another week.

The refund-or-credit question is where most Australian flight disputes actually live, and it is worth being precise about who gets to decide. Where the failure is minor, the airline chooses the remedy and a credit or a rebooking is a legitimate answer. Where the failure is major, the choice is yours, and the ACCC's service guidance gives you the option of cancelling the contract and taking a refund. So the fight over cash versus credit is really a fight over whether the failure was major, which is why the previous section matters so much.

Airlines prefer credits for obvious reasons. A credit keeps the money inside the business, is often issued against the booking rather than the traveller, and frequently comes wrapped in conditions the original ticket never had: an expiry date, a requirement to travel by a certain date rather than merely to book by it, restrictions on routes or fare classes, no cash-out for the unused balance, and sometimes no transferability to another passenger. A credit issued at the counter can therefore be worth materially less than the fare it replaced, even though the number printed on it is identical.

Read the conditions before you accept, and ask three specific questions in writing: by when must I book, by when must I travel, and what happens to any unused balance. If the answers are unacceptable, say so in the same message and ask for the refund instead, stating why you consider the failure major. Airlines settle far more readily against a customer who has named the test than against one who is simply unhappy.

If you already hold a credit and now want the money, the claim has not disappeared. A credit accepted without a proper explanation of the alternative, or issued when the failure was in fact major, is a live consumer guarantee dispute, and it is the kind of matter the airline's own complaints team can and does resolve. The practical limitation is time and evidence, so raise it promptly rather than a fortnight before the credit expires.

It is worth knowing why this is such a sore point in Australia, because it explains the reform now in train. The Aviation White Paper commitments include requiring airlines to refund passengers directly to the card or payment platform used rather than issuing credits, precisely because customers were accumulating credits they struggled to redeem. That is a proposed future obligation, not a current one — but the fact that government has singled it out is a useful thing to mention when an airline insists a credit is all that is on offer.

The part of Australian consumer law that a disrupted traveller most often leaves on the table is compensation for consequential loss. The ACCC's guidance is that compensation should put the consumer back in the financial position they were in before the problem happened, and that a business is responsible for loss or damage caused by the failure to meet a consumer guarantee where that loss was reasonably foreseeable. This is a separate head of claim from the refund, and you can pursue both.

Reasonably foreseeable is the whole test, and it is not a high bar in the travel context. That a cancelled flight will cost a passenger a night's accommodation at the destination, a pre-booked airport transfer, a missed connection on a separate ticket or a non-refundable first night of a tour is not a surprising outcome — it is the ordinary consequence of not arriving. Frame the claim that way. Set out the loss, attach the invoice, and state in one sentence why it followed directly from the flight not operating.

The limit is causation, and the ACCC illustrates it with a deliberately unglamorous example about a faulty car leaking oil onto a driveway and a dog then walking the oil through the house: the dealer does not pay for the carpet cleaning, because the dog's intervention was unrelated to the fault. The travel analogue is the loss that would have happened anyway, or that depends on a choice you made for your own reasons. A first-class hotel booked because you were annoyed is not recoverable; the standard room you had already paid for and could not use is a much better claim.

Quantify precisely and do not inflate. The ACCC frames compensation as restoring the consumer's financial position, taking existing wear and tear into account, which in travel terms means claiming the actual out-of-pocket amount rather than a round number that feels fair. A claim of $412.60 supported by three receipts is paid; a claim of "about $500 in expenses" invites a counter-offer of a voucher.

Where the airline settles part of the claim and refuses the rest, ask it to say in writing which items it is refusing and why. That single request does two things. It forces the airline to identify a reason you can test, and it produces the document that the Airline Customer Advocate, a state consumer agency or a tribunal will want to see first. A refusal without reasons is a much weaker position for the airline than most customers realise. It is also worth remembering that a fixed European-style payout would not reach these losses at all — it pays a flat amount whatever the disruption cost you, which for a traveller with expensive forward bookings is often less than the Australian route recovers.

There are clear situations where a provider is not obliged to give you a replacement or a refund, and it is better to know them than to spend three weeks arguing a claim that was never going to succeed. The ACCC names two: where the consumer changes their mind or arrives late, and where a third party prevents the service being delivered, giving government restrictions as its example. In those circumstances, its guidance says the right to a refund or replacement travel service will generally depend on the terms and conditions of the booking.

That second limb is the one airlines lean on hardest, and it is genuinely arguable rather than automatic. A cyclone closing an airport, an air traffic control failure, a security incident or a border closure are external events. A rostering shortfall, an aircraft that was not serviceable, a schedule the airline had already decided to consolidate, or a delay caused by an earlier disruption to the same aircraft are much closer to the airline's own operations. Get the stated reason early, and if the reason shifts between the airport, the app and the eventual complaint response, say so — an inconsistent explanation is itself evidence.

The ACCC also confirms that there is no fixed definition of a reasonable time, and that where the parties disagree it is a court or tribunal that decides, weighing matters such as the purpose of the travel and the airline's schedule. Two practical implications follow. First, tell the airline what the trip was for, because the purpose is part of the legal test and not merely an appeal to sympathy. Second, a delay that is trivial on a daily trunk route can be serious on a route flown three times a week, because the next reasonable opportunity is days rather than hours away.

Even where the statutory claim is weak, the airline's own published policy may still bite. Most large carriers publish a compensation or disruption policy covering meals, accommodation, transfers and rebooking after defined thresholds, and the ACCC's statement that those rights sit on top of consumer guarantees works in both directions: the policy cannot reduce your statutory rights, and your statutory position not being met does not stop you enforcing the policy as a published promise. Read the airline's charter and quote it by clause.

There is a hard-edged reminder in recent enforcement that airline conduct around cancellations is not beyond challenge. In proceedings the ACCC commenced in August 2023, the Federal Court in October 2024 ordered Qantas to pay a $100 million penalty over the sale of tickets for flights it had already decided to cancel and delays in telling customers that flights were cancelled, and the airline agreed to a $20 million remediation covering roughly 87,000 customers at $225 to $450 each, with a further group of about 883,000 travellers affected by late notification and outside that payment. The lesson is not that a penalty is a private remedy — it is not — but that a misleading cancellation practice is a distinct legal problem from a delayed service, and worth reporting.

Finally, be realistic about who polices this day to day. The ACCC says it monitors airlines, airports and airfares and reports to government, but does not regulate them and does not handle individual complaints about delays or cancellations. Its quarterly domestic airline competition reporting continues — the latest update on its monitoring page is dated 16 June 2026 — but that is market surveillance, not a complaints channel.

Start with the airline's own complaints channel, and start in writing. The ACCC's guidance on contacting a business is to raise the problem promptly, state the problem and the outcome you want, give the dates, describe what you have already done, and attach the supporting documentation such as receipts and invoices. Its model complaint letter asks for a response within ten days before the matter is escalated to a regulator, and adopting that deadline is a good habit — it converts an open-ended grievance into something with a due date.

Structure the letter so a case officer can approve it without thinking. One paragraph of facts with flight numbers and times. One paragraph naming the consumer guarantee — that the service was not supplied within a reasonable time — and stating whether you say the failure was major and why. One short numbered list of what you want, with an amount against each line. Then the attachments. Anything longer than a page gets skimmed, and anything that reads as an emotional narrative gets a form reply.

If the airline refuses or does not answer, the free next step for the three largest carriers is the Airline Customer Advocate, which describes itself as providing a free and independent service to eligible customers of major Australian airlines by facilitating the resolution of current unresolved complaints, and which lists Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia. Two things to understand about it: it takes complaints that are already unresolved, meaning you must have gone to the airline first, and it facilitates rather than determines. It is a useful pressure step, not a tribunal.

For any other carrier, or where the Advocate does not resolve it, the ACCC's escalation advice is to contact your state consumer protection agency, and it notes that some industries have an ombudsman or other complaint body. Those agencies conciliate individual disputes and a letter from them frequently moves a matter that a customer's own letter did not. Every state and territory has one, and the table below lists them with the numbers we were able to confirm from the agencies' own pages.

The step that gives all of the earlier ones their weight is the tribunal. The ACCC states plainly that each state has a small claims court or tribunal that hears cases about consumer and fair trading issues, and that you also have the option of taking legal action. In practice that means NCAT in New South Wales, VCAT in Victoria, QCAT in Queensland and their counterparts elsewhere — cheap, informal, and designed to be used without a lawyer. Filing fees are modest and the jurisdictional limits are generous relative to the size of a fare-plus-expenses claim.

Report to the ACCC in parallel, but understand what you are doing. Its Infocentre is on 1300 302 502, Monday to Friday from 11am to 3pm, and it says in terms that it does not resolve individual complaints or give legal advice on your rights. A report feeds the enforcement picture — the sort of picture that produced the Qantas proceedings — and costs you five minutes. It will not produce your refund.

Keep one folder for the whole matter. The airline complaint, the Advocate referral, the state agency conciliation and a tribunal application all draw on the same evidence: the booking confirmation, the timestamped cancellation notice, the airline's stated reason, your written notice that you were booking an alternative, the receipts, and the refusal with reasons. Assembling it once serves all four.

Travel insurance is the second door, and it is governed by an entirely different system from the one above. The ACCC states directly that consumer guarantees in the Australian Consumer Law do not apply to financial products such as insurance. That is not a technicality — it means the major-failure test, the choice of remedy and the compensation rules described on this page simply do not operate against an insurer. What governs the insurer is the policy wording, the General Insurance Code of Practice and, on escalation, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority.

What the policy will and will not do is worth checking before you claim rather than after. The Insurance Council of Australia describes travel insurance as cover for an unexpected event such as a medical emergency, lost luggage or flight cancellation, and lists the usual exclusions: high-risk activities, restrictions around pre-existing medical conditions, travel to places carrying an official government warning, and — in most policies — infectious disease outbreaks, pandemics and epidemics, though some products now offer specific cover. Its own research found many insured travellers were overconfident about what they held and had not read the policy documents.

The single most common reason a flight-disruption claim fails is duplication. Most policies will not pay for a loss the airline has already reimbursed, and many require you to claim from the airline first and to prove what it paid or refused. So the order matters: pursue the airline, get the outcome in writing, and then lodge the insurance claim with the airline's response attached. Doing it the other way around usually produces a request for exactly that document and a delay of several weeks.

If the insurer declines, the General Insurance Code of Practice is the industry standard that sits alongside the contract. It is a voluntary Insurance Council code, first made in 1994 and last updated in October 2023, requiring insurers to be open, fair and honest and setting timeframes for responding to claims, complaints and requests for information. Breaches can be reported to the independent Code Governance Committee, and the insurer's own internal complaints process is the step before any external escalation.

The third door is your card. Where an airline has collapsed, or has taken payment for a service it never delivered and will not refund, a chargeback runs through the card scheme rather than the merchant and works even when the business has stopped answering. It has its own deadlines, which are shorter than most people assume and can run from the date you expected to travel rather than the date you paid — an important distinction for a flight booked far in advance. Ask your bank for a chargeback by name, not for a refund.

Take the doors in order rather than all at once. Airline first, because that is where the statutory claim lives and where the other two will ask what happened. Insurance second, for the losses the airline declines and the policy covers. Chargeback where the counterparty has failed or will not engage at all and the clock is the binding constraint.

Status, as at 6 August 2026: pending, and not a current entitlement. The Australian Government committed in the Aviation White Paper of August 2024 to a set of aviation consumer protections built around two instruments — an Aviation Customer Rights Charter and an independent Aviation Industry Ombuds Scheme. Consultation on the design ran during 2025 and submissions closed on 5 October 2025, with the final scheme expected to commence during 2026 and an interim service to run beforehand. Nothing on this page should be read as saying the scheme is already available to you.

What is proposed is a genuine structural change to the escalation ladder. The ombudsman would be independent and industry-funded, with a complaints handling process modelled on existing schemes such as the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, and it would replace the Airline Customer Advocate — a body whose central weakness has always been that it facilitates complaints rather than deciding them. The proposal contemplates the ombudsman being able to compel airlines to provide compensation where warranted, which is the substantive difference.

The Charter is the second half and the more interesting one. The reporting describes the ombudsman legislation as setting out a customer rights charter spelling out the circumstances in which passengers must be refunded, and requiring airlines to report valid reasons for delays and cancellations to the ombudsman, who could refer questionable cases to the ACCC. Two specific consumer commitments have been trailed: refunds paid directly back to the card or payment platform rather than issued as credits, and enforceable standards for the treatment of passengers with disability.

What it is not, on the design consulted on, is a European-style compensation tariff. The consumer group CHOICE's response to the consultation was that the proposal lacked clear rights to compensation for delayed or cancelled flights, noting that European compensation schemes have encouraged airlines to reduce avoidable delays, and that the proposed ombudsman fell short of the strong independent schemes operating in banking and telecommunications. Whether that criticism was taken up in the final design is exactly the thing to check rather than assume.

What should a traveller do with this today. Treat the Airline Customer Advocate as the current free escalation for Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia, and the state and territory consumer agencies and tribunals as the enforceable ones. Before escalating, check whether an aviation ombudsman scheme is open and taking complaints — if it is, it will be free and better resourced than the alternatives. Do not delay lodging a claim in the hope the new scheme arrives in time to hear it.

And keep the underlying point in view. Whatever the Charter eventually says, it will sit on top of the Australian Consumer Law rather than replace it, in the same way an airline's own compensation policy already does. The consumer guarantee that a service is supplied within a reasonable time, the right to choose the remedy where the failure is major, and the right to reasonably foreseeable losses are statutory, are already in force, and are what a well-documented claim runs on today.