This was published 6 years ago
Qantas free business class flights Facebook scam: They're not giving away seats
By Craig Platt
The fake Qantas website that the 'free flight' posts will take users to.
No wonder "fake news" has become such a big thing.
Not for the first time, thousands of Australians have been sucked in by a social media scam that claims Qantas is giving away business class flights to "everyone".
This time the scammers claim it is to celebrate the airline's 97th anniversary.
But, as usual, there are obvious signs that the whole thing is fake.
Aside from the fact that no airline would just give away thousands of business class flights, costing millions of dollars, for no particular reason, the posts are poorly worded and link through to websites that are clearly not Qantas' official site (qantas.com.au).
"Qantas Airline is gifting 2 FREE Business Class Tickets to EVERYONE! on 97th anniversary! Get yours here – (2 Tickets) per user."
This sentence is a complete mess of mixed capitalisation, exclamation points, brackets and the fact that Qantas supposedly refers to itself as "Qantas Airline" (have you ever heard Qantas call itself "Qantas Airline"?).
The link then takes you to a site (which tends to be along the lines of "qantas-[insert other word here].com") inviting users to then take part in a survey.
"You have been selected to take part in our short survey to get 2 Free Business Class Tickets at Qantas Airline! We only have 432 Tickets remaining so hurry up!"
The scam is about generating as many likes as possible in the shortest amount of time, and also potentially scamming affiliate programs of retail sites such as Amazon.
A Qantas spokesman advised people to report the posts to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's Scamwatch website and summed it up thus: "If it sounds too good to be true then it probably is."
But perhaps it's better summed up by the famous quote attributed to American showman P.T. Barnum: "There's a sucker born every minute."
Sign up for the Traveller newsletter
The latest travel news, tips and inspiration delivered to your inbox. Sign up now.