Refund Passengers Who Cancelled Flights In Lockdown: Govt To Airlines
Mumbai: Civil Aviation Ministry on Wednesday pulled up airline companies for defaulting on passenger refunds over cancelled flight tickets booked for travel during lockdown last year.
“The MoCA Secretary held a meeting with all airline companies regarding credit shell refunds and reprimanded the airline companies for not refunding the tickets purchased by the passengers before the lockdown last year,” an official said.
Earlier, on 31 March 2021 Supreme Court ordered that the airlines can keep the refund amount in the credit shell till. If by this date, the passenger does not use the booking amount already paid, then the airlines will have to return the amount to the passengers.
National carrier Air India is also yet to refund total credit shells to the passengers. As per reports, Air India has to clear credit shells to around five lakh twenty-five thousand passengers which amount to around Rs 2000 crore.
Whereas, India’s largest domestic airline IndiGo has returned approximately Rs 1,030 crore to customers. The airline operated by Interglobe Aviation Limited said in a statement, “IndiGo has completed 99.95% customer credit shell and delivery of refunds.
Earlier on October 1st, 2020 Supreme Court said that a full and immediate refund should be given to passengers for the air tickets cancelled between March 25 and May 24. No scheduled domestic and international passenger flights operated in the country in this period.
In the case of international booking, the court ordered that the booking amount of the cancelled flights be returned to the passenger by the airline or travel agent within 15 days of the issuance of the order.
In December 2020, the government said that airlines had refunded about three-fourth of the number of passengers in case of cancelled flights. But there are still many travellers who have no clarity about their refunds.
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