Customers of Australian regional carrier JetGo have been told to contact their credit card companies after the airline grounded regular passenger services and entered voluntary administration.
The airline announced June 1 it had appointed McLeod and Partners as administrators and that all operations had been “temporarily suspended”.
It advised customers to contact their credit card company “to consider your options with respect to a refund of your ticket purchase”. They could also lodge a claim with the company, it said.
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The privately-held company operated a fleet of five Embraer regional Jets and serviced Brisbane Airport, Melbourne’s Essendon Airport and a number of regional centres.
The decision comes after the Dubbo Regional Council took steps to have the company wound up over a long dispute over the calculation of passenger taxes at the local airport.
The council’s lawyers said the airline owed $271,917.57 and the council had been actively communicating with the airline for 12 months about its debts.
“Following months of ongoing direct negotiations with JetGo, Council then issued a statutory demand in the first instance,’’ the lawyers said in a statement issued in late May. “Jetgo failed to comply with that statutory demand.
“With a clear responsibility to the community, Council has then taken this final step to lodge a winding up application in order to get a result for the community. The winding-up proceedings are listed for June 18, 2018.”
JetGo had been due to start Brisbane-Karratha services from June 25 but subsequently revised the start date to August 6, citing aircraft delivery delays.
It had also suspended services between Tamworth and Brisbane on May 14.
“Despite an obvious small core demand for the jet service, unfortunately the traffic demand and high costs cannot support two carriers on this route, therefore JetGo has made the commercial decision to redeploy its aircraft onto other routes,” managing director Paul Brederick said at the time.
JetGo started life in 2012 operating charter and fly-in, fly-out services and announced it would move into regular public transport in late 2014.
Qantas has set up a hotline number for Jetgo passengers to assist with canceled flights.
