MSN – A Jetstar passenger has irked the airline by finding a loophole allowing him to book 58 flights for $0 – and the two parties are now locked in a legal battle.
Lawyer Tyrone Barugh booked a flight from Auckland to Sydney for $260 and received a free return fare as part of a promotion Jetstar was running.
He then cancelled the outbound flight and was given credit with the airline – but did not cancel the return trip.
Mr Barugh then used the credit to book another flight, before doing the same thing a further 57 times.
At first I wanted to call this man a genius. But to refer to him as genius is giving him too much credit. More than anything, it’s just a massive oversight by Jetstar for allowing this to happen. Jetstar served this loophole up on a silver platter. They should have seen it coming from a mile away. In a world where I was traveling with Jetstar, and I stumbled upon this promotion while booking a flight, I’m pretty sure I would have tried it myself. I found an article promoting this deal from when it was first rolled out and it’s a bit of a crazy offer.
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TimeOut – Guess who’s having a big birthday bash? Jetstar (aka: Australia’s most contentious airline) is turning the big two-zero this year, and they’re putting on a mega sale to mark this milestone. To celebrate, they’re slinging ‘return for free’ flight deals, with sale airfares for more than 200,000 domestic and international flights. Yep, that means you could soon be soaking up the sun in Phuket or Honolulu for under $500 return. We love to see it.
Jetstar’s 20th birthday sale really is as simple as it sounds. You pay for the outbound flight and voila, your return fare won’t cost you a cent. Just a heads up, though: pack light as luggage isn’t included (but you can always add on check-in baggage for an extra fee).
So if you’re Jetstar, and you’ve decided you’re moving forward with this promotion, you would obviously sell these tickets as a package deal, right? Just keep the tickets connected. So that if I purchase my flight from Australia to Hawaii and end up cancelling, the return flight is immediately nixed as well. That’s such the obvious thing to do.
Put yourself in Tyrone Barugh Esquire’s shoes for a second. You purchase your original ticket. You’re then separately sent a free return ticket. You might think to yourself, “Wait a second… so if I just cancel this paid for flight and get a full refund… would I still just have this free return ticket? No way that would actually work, right? They can’t be that stupid. Fuck it… I have to find out for myself… oh my god it worked…”
After realizing how phenomenally dumb the good blokes at Jetstar are, I think I would do what Tyrone did and just go crazy. Use the credit you got back from Jetstar, apply it to the same promotion, cancel the outgoing flight once again, and just keep doing it over and over and over and over again until you’ve accumulated 58 flights for the price of 1 for no reason whatsoever.
To be honest I don’t really know what you do from there, unless you can find a way to sell your tickets on the black market. But to use a plane ticket you need a matching ID, so I’m not sure how that could work. Maybe you’d be able to time them up perfectly so that you can travel freely from Australia, to Hawaii, to Japan, to China, and to whatever weird tropical islands Jetstar services flights to. But considering there were only a limited number of flights available, I’d imagine that might be difficult to pull off. Tyrone however had something different in mind.
NY Post – Barugh said he didn’t intend on using any of the flights, but instead hoped to receive a settlement from Jetstar.
The lawyer has taken the matter to the Disputes Tribunal of New Zealand, claiming he is also entitled to a refund on the taxes owed on the flights, which add up to about $2,971 ($4,500 AUD), due to a combination of Australian legislation and Jetstar’s policies.
I’m not even entirely sure what that means. It seems like a whole lot of effort and a shit load of paperwork for a small chance at a settlement. Still, I have no choice but to tip my cap to any person who does anything that will somehow screw over an airline. Major airlines will utilize every legal trick in the book and reference the smallest print your eyes have ever seen just to get out of refunding you $20. But the airlines blew it this time. Now they have to deal with Tyrone. As it turns out, I’m not even sure Tyrone (who seems like a nightmare of a person) cares about the money. He’s just having a blast exploiting Jetstar’s poorly thought out promotion. He sure as well won’t shut up about it on Twitter.
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I guess maybe it’s a bit about the money. But more than anything he seems to be fucking with them for fun. I respect that. The commercial airlines have been fucking us over since the invention of commercial airlines. Anything someone can do to make their lives a worse is commendable in my book. Just imagine having to deal with this guy.
He truly seems like a dreadful person to deal with. The article linked in the tweet goes into more boring detail about the legality behind the whole thing. Apparently he’s somehow entitled to a tax refund for something that he never paid in the first place. The point is Tyrone is putting Jetstar through a whole mess of legal bullshit over a few thousand dollars. But he’s loving every bit of it. God if I were dealing with him I would want to rip those stupid glasses off his face and shove them down his throat. He is exactly the type of person the airlines deserve. Keep up the good work Tyrone. You seem insufferable but you’re a hero in my book. Please do United Airlines next.