Virgin Australia has offered to refund 61,000 passengers after a pricing error made the airline overcharge for flight changes over five years.
According to the airline, customers who made changes to their itineraries between 21 April 2020 and 31 March 2025 were incorrectly charged due to an error in the airline’s pricing systems.
A spokesperson for the airline said: “At Virgin Australia, we have policies that determine when and how we reprice a guest’s booking when they make a change to their itinerary.
“We recently found that in some instances from 21 April 2020 to 31 March 2025, some bookings were repriced in a way that does not align with our policy, and we are refunding all impacted guests for that amount.”
An internal investigation found that 0.1 per cent of bookings made during the period had been impacted by the error.
Virgin, one of Australia’s largest carriers, said the average refund will be AU$55 (£26.35) per passenger.
The airline reported the mistake to The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and is working with the regulator to deliver the refunds.
It said, “we want to do the right thing and that means acknowledging when we get things wrong and fixing it”.
Virgin Australia will contact eligible customers by email, with Deloitte appointed to conduct the refund claim process through an online portal.
The refund program will be open for 12 months, with unclaimed amounts donated to charity.
Virgin Australia said: “We sincerely apologise to those affected guests and have launched an Itinerary Change Claim Program under which all eligible guests are being proactively contacted to process their refunds.”
The airline added that a dedicated team has been working to fix the pricing issue in the relevant systems and complete a “wide review of the relevant processes across the business”.
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