Significantly more complaints: Airlines are too often too slow to reimburse tickets

The statutory deadline for reimbursing the ticket price for canceled flights is seven days. Airlines in Germany are apparently taking significantly more time. At least the Federal Aviation Office is increasingly taking action against airlines.

The Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (LBA) is increasingly taking action against airlines because of the slow ticket reimbursement for canceled flights. A spokesman for the authority told the "Handelsblatt" that after complaints about the reimbursement of ticket costs in connection with pandemic-related flight cancellations, 292 administrative offense proceedings had been initiated so far. At the beginning of August there were 174 cases.

The authority did not provide any information about which airlines the fine proceedings are directed against and whether fines have already been imposed. In Germany, the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt is the official enforcement and complaints office for the rights of passengers. In view of the thousands of canceled flights and canceled trips as a result of the Corona crisis, the LBA also registered a large number of consumer complaints about airlines.

The authority is currently processing 2161 complaints that were received between March 17 and September 30, 2020 due to denied boarding or the cancellation or delay of flights. According to the spokesman for the authorities, 1701 of these complaints relate to alleged violations of the statutory deadline of seven days for ticket reimbursement for canceled flights. The Arbitration Board for Public Transport (SÖP) also registers many complaints about airlines.

"As a result of the corona pandemic, consumers turned to us with their problem more often than ever before," said SÖP managing director Heinz Klewe to the "Handelsblatt". Accordingly, this year the number of complaints with the SÖP about flights added up to more than 28,000 by the end of September. Compared to the same period in the previous year, this corresponds to an increase of around 70 percent. More than 4,000 complaints were received about train tickets by the end of September 2020. Here the percentage increase was somewhat lower. According to estimates by the SÖP, there could be a total of 40,000 complaints at the end of the year; in 2019 there were around 26,000.

. (tagsToTranslate) Economy (t) Corona crisis (t) Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (t) Luftfahrt