An Australian family was dealt blow after blow while trying to fly home from their holiday in Japan with Jetstar, costing them thousands of dollars.
Cassandra Nichterlein was at the airport ready to fly out of Osaka with her husband and three children last month when their flight was canceled due to an engineering issue.
But the very same day, the world was also hit with an IT outage that disrupted banks, supermarkets, hospitals, news outlets and airlines across the world – marking the beginning of the Nichterlein family’s nightmare.
Jetstar was significantly impacted by the CrowdStrike outage and was forced to cancel all its flights on July 19, but even as flights resumed the following day the flow-on effects caused huge headaches for travelers.
Ms. Nichterlein told ABC News that her family was advised by airport staff to find their own accommodation and seek compensation from the airline.
Without any direct communication from Jetstar and unaware of the CrowdStrike outage, they did just that.
It turned into three days in Osaka without communication with Jetstar, according to Ms. Nichterlein.
The family then caught the bullet train to Tokyo hoping to find more available flights, ABC reported.
It was another four nights before they got a return flight, with expenses amounting to $7,000.
“It was quite traumatic, not knowing when we would get home,” Ms. Nichterlein told the outlet.
However, the drama didn’t end when the family got back to Sydney.
“We spent hours and hours and hours uploading receipts and then were questioned about them, because they’re written in Japanese,” Ms Nichterlein said.
“They offered us a $600 payment, which is just insulting.”
On Wednesday, Jetstar confirmed to news.com.au that they would reimburse the family’s expenses. However, according to the ABC and Mrs Nichterlein at time of publication — the airline was yet to make contact.
“We’re really sorry about the experience that the Nichterlein family had with us in Japan,” a Jetstar spokesperson told news.com.au on Wednesday morning.
“Unfortunately their flight was cancelled due to an engineering issue on the same day that the global Crowdstrike outage took place, which grounded our flights and impacted our customer communications system.
“This meant we were unable to communicate with our customers and there were limited alternative flights for a number of days.
“We have reached out and apologised to Mrs Nichterlein for the error we made with her claim, and will reimburse the family’s expenses.”
News.com.au has reached out to Mrs Nichterlein for comment.
