Qantas offers customers $34 vouchers to compensate for flight cancellations and says staff sick leave was partly to blame for chaos

Qantas is giving vouchers, premium memberships, and access to business lounges to passengers who have been through a summer of travel chaos.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce recorded a video message to customers. The return to flying has not been easy. Over the past few months, a lot of you have had flights canceled or delayed.

As an apology for the travel disruption, frequent fliers were offered 50 Australian dollars, or $34, in vouchers, an extension to Qantas' silver membership by a year, and access to business lounges.

Qantas has been beset by operational challenges as it attempts to recover from the swine flu. Passengers have complained of difficulties handling baggage, inaccurate bookings, and long delays on its phone line.

Over the summer, the airline's performance has been the worst, although it has improved recently. According to data from the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research, Qantas canceled 6.2% of flights in July, down from 2.5% in June.

Joyce said that the airline's performance wasn't good enough. Labor shortages are one of the reasons for the problems.

Joyce said in the video message that Qantas has hired 1,500 workers and adjusted their schedules to deal with a 50% increase in sick leave. New technology was being rolled out by the airline to make customers' journeys simpler.

100 senior office staff were asked to help mitigate the shortfall on August 8. Volunteers have been working in airports since Easter.

Qantas did not respond immediately to Insider's request for comment.

The union bosses pointed out that the group let thousands of workers go during the Pandemic.

The general secretary of the Transport Workers Union Australia said that thousands of passengers who have spent hours in call center queue will not want to waste more of their time trying to cash in a voucher to buy themselves more of the same chaos.