Sichuan Airlines, Tianjin Airlines and Xiangpeng Air have joined a growing list of airliners on Tuesday, which have suspended partnership with Qunar.com. Prior to this event, four large Chinese airliners had terminated their partnership with China’s second largest travel site.
On Monday, China Eastern Air and Air China, the state airline, announced on their official Weibo accounts that they will shut down flagship stores on Qunar.com, suspending their partnership with Qunar, reports NetEase Tech.
Prior to this, China Southern Air and Hainan Airlines suspended their cooperation with Qunar on the last day of 2015.
According to the announcements of all four airlines, they are suspending cooperation with Qunar due to complaints from passengers who bought air tickets on Qunar.com.
The official announcement from Air China states: “lately, we’ve received a lot complaints from passengers who bought tickets on Qunar.com. They complained that Qunar.com arbitrarily raises the price of air tickets, alters the terms and conditions of ticket use, adds fees for ticket changes & refunds and fails to notify them about flight changes. In order to ensure your rights and interests are protected, Air China has decided to close its online flagship store on Qunar.com on January 5, 2016. ”
Altogether, that makes four airlines who have cancelled their cooperation with Qunar. Qunar has been seeing some turmoil after its merger with China’s top online tourism platform Ctrip, with its former CEO Zhuang Chenchao and CTO David Wu both resigning on Monday. Ctrip acquired Qunar from China’s biggest search engine Baidu two months ago to become its biggest non-controlling shareholder. The deal was believed to have been closed between Baidu and Ctrip without consent from the administration of Qunar.
