Qantas free tickets scam gets 70k Facebook likes

A scam offering all Australians a pair of free business class tickets with Qantas Airways has gone viral on Facebook.

A hoax article is titled: ‘Qantas Airline [sic] is gifting two FREE Business Class Tickets to EVERYONE! On 97th Anniversary!’

And despite incorrectly naming Australia’s national carrier in the headline, it attracted more than 70,000 likes after being shared on Facebook, according to Trendolizer. 

The fake post uses an image of a pair of business class tickets for a Sydney to Dallas flight that was taken from a travel blog.

A scam offering all Australians a pair of free business class tickets with Qantas Airways has gone viral on Facebook

The picture has then been edited to remove the name on the tickets, replacing them with ‘Your Name Here.’

To get the tickets, Facebook users are directed to a survey, which features the airline’s logo, before they can claim a pair of tickets. 

It asks them to answer three questions, which include misspellings, including whether they have travelled with Qantas, what they like about the airline.

A Qantas spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia that they were aware of the scam – and urged customers who come across such hoaxes to report them. 

‘Customers should make sure that they are interacting with Qantas’ official social media channels,’ the spokesperson said.

A Qantas spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia that they were aware of the scam

A Qantas spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia that they were aware of the scam

‘You are able to tell if it’s the official Qantas Facebook page because it will have a blue tick on the landing page verifying that it is so.

‘Customers who find these fake pages should let us know as we then report them to Facebook, but these types of pages draw on a number of well-known brands.

‘We advise anyone caught to report this to Scamwatch and also if the offer sounds too good to be true, then unfortunately it usually is.’

It’s not the first time people have been fooled by a fake ticket scam involving the airline.

In 2015, thousands of Facebook users shared a photo shared by a fake page masquerading as Qantas. 

The hoax urged users to share the post – from the ‘Qantas Airline’ page – to win in a bid to win a year of free first-class flights.

The fake campaign attracted about 157,000 shares and more than 130,000 likes in less than a day, CNN reported at the time.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Qantas for comment. 

 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk