Jetstar has apologised for an 'unacceptable situation' after claims the airline put two random teenage girls in a hotel room with one bed together after a flight was cancelled.
However, one of the teens involved told Newshub that Jetstar has not yet apologised to her directly.
The situation occurred after a flight from Auckland to Christchurch was cancelled on Tuesday, November 15 due to pilot illness, Jetstar said.
After hours of waiting at the airport, passengers were put into accommodation paid for by Jetstar - but the partner of one of them posted on Reddit with a complaint about what happened next.
"When everyone arrives at the hotel, my (18f) girlfriend finds out she has been put in the same room with an underage girl (17f) with ONE BED," the post on the New Zealand subreddit reads.
"She ended up sleeping on the couch in the room with a complete stranger. Is there any compensation they can get for such an unacceptable violation, to force her to sleep in a one bed hotel room with a (underaged) minor?"
Jetstar has confirmed to Newshub it received a complaint by one of the customers involved and stated it is against policy to ask strangers to share a room together.
"Under no circumstances would we request or expect customers who aren't related to share a room, not even friends or colleagues who are travelling together," a Jetstar spokesperson said.
"We sincerely apologise for this unacceptable situation and have reached out to both customers to better understand what happened and offer our support and compensation.
"In the event of a cancellation where disrupted passengers require accommodation, we coordinate with our hotel provider to allocate rooms to customers and we're looking into this case as a matter of urgency to prevent it happening again."
The 17-year-old involved - who asked Newshub only to use her first name, Summer - said the accommodation was Hotel DeBrett and the staff there were "amazing", but were limited in what they could do.
She said the person she shared the room with was lovely and offered to sleep on the couch, but it was still very awkward.
"It was extremely uncomfortable - I felt quite unsafe and uneasy. Anything could have happened as I didn't know her at all," Summer told Newshub.
Her message to Jetstar: "Do better, plan better, communicate better - this could have been prevented."
Jetstar told Newshub it was not aware of a complaint about the accommodation arrangements until Thursday, despite the Reddit post saying Jetstar staff "didn't see the problem" when allegedly alerted to it on Tuesday.
