Ryanair confirmed today that it was making rapid progress in processing customer refunds for flights cancelled during the period from March to June as a result of Government imposed Covid-19 flight cancellations.
Since the Ryanair Dublin offices reopened on 1 June last, 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 15 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 Jul, Aug & Sept.
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.
Ryanair’s CEO Eddie Wilson said:
“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. It is worrying however that a significant rump of our customers, who made bookings through unauthorised 3rd party screenscrapers / online travel agencies, have yet to receive their refunds because the OTAs gave Ryanair fake email addresses or virtual credit card details for these customers.
We are highlighting this fact to the regulators in Ireland (CAR) and in the UK (CAA) as this demonstrates yet again why urgent regulation of unauthorised screenscrapers is needed to ensure that these unauthorised intermediaries provide airlines with accurate email addresses and valid payment details for customers so we can process cash refunds to these customers promptly and efficiently.
We will continue to process these cash refunds as fast as we can, and would encourage any customers who haven’t yet requested a cash refund, to do so with our Customer Service team and we will process their request as quickly as possible.”