Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline, confirmed that it was making rapid progress in processing customer refunds for flights cancelled during the period from March to June as a result of worldwide-imposed COVID-19 flight cancellations.
“We are pleased to have made such significant progress over the month of June in eliminating the backlog of cash refunds due to the COVID-19 flight cancellations. Over 90% of passengers who booked directly with Ryanair and who requested a cash refund for travel between March and June will receive their refunds before the end of July,” said Ryanair’s CEO Eddie Wilson.
Since the Ryanair Dublin offices reopened on 1st June, additional refunds staff have been trained to eliminate the backlog of customer refund requests, with the following results:
- All March cash refund requests have now been cleared.
- At the end of June, 50% of April cash refunds have been cleared.
- By 15th July, the balance of April cash refunds will be processed.
- By the end of July, all of May and most of June cash refunds will also be processed.
These figures include passengers who have accepted travel vouchers and/or free moves onto flights that are now being operated by Ryanair in the months of July, August, and September.
Friction with online travel agents
Ryanair also called on screenscraping online travel agents (OTAs) to provide accurate details of their unauthorised bookings, so Ryanair can also process these refunds. A significant minority of Ryanair’s refunds are being blocked due to OTAs using fake email addresses and virtual credit cards when making bookings, which cannot be traced back to the individual consumer. Ryanair calls on all affected customers who have not yet received their refund to contact OTAs’ Customer Service to ensure that OTAs have acted on Ryanair’s notification emails and are cooperating with Ryanair so these refund requests can also be processed.
