Missing ticket reimbursements: Pressure on airlines is growing

A policy stipulates that passengers after canceled flights get their money back within a certain period of time. So far, however, only a fraction of customers have been reimbursed for the costs of canceled flights in the Corona crisis. Now the Federal Aviation Office is putting pressure on the airlines.

According to a newspaper report, the German authorities are putting pressure on airlines that have not yet reimbursed the money for the tickets after flights canceled due to the corona pandemic. The Federal Aviation Office (LBA) had "initially issued warnings against various aviation companies", the authority informed the "Welt am Sonntag" according to a preliminary report.

Lufthansa 7.90

"In addition, administrative offense proceedings have been initiated against suspicious aviation companies." However, the proceedings have not yet been concluded. Numerous flights have been canceled due to the corona pandemic. Air traffic around the world came to an almost complete standstill and is only slowly recovering. Numerous airlines are now in a bind and some of them are receiving state aid, such as Lufthansa. The repayments mean an additional burden for the airlines.

According to board member Harry Hohmeister, Lufthansa received more than two million reimbursement requests. The airline was "overwhelmed" by the Corona crisis, said Hohmeister a few days ago. The processing of the applications currently takes ten to fifteen minutes, before the crisis it was three to four minutes. Many claims by passengers are also unjustified. There may be long waiting times for a refund due to "complex bookings". But Hohmeister agreed: "Every customer who is entitled to a refund will definitely get it from us."

Reimbursement is actually clearly regulated

According to European air passenger law, refunds for canceled flights must be made within seven days of notification of the cancellation. This applies not only to European airlines, but to every booking of a flight with a departure point in an EU country. Customers do not have to accept the vouchers that are often issued by airlines after the Corona-related cancellations. If you reject the voucher, you are entitled to a refund.

However, this reimbursement is sometimes slow and apparently different depending on the airline, as the report shows. The travel law portal Fairplane evaluated 54,000 cases. Accordingly, Easyjet customers have already been compensated in 96 percent of the cases. In the end, there are airlines like Ryanair with five percent, and the Lufthansa subsidiaries Eurowings and Swiss with four and five percent.

. (tagsToTranslate) Economy (t) Corona crisis (t) Airlines (t) Consumer protection