Over 60% airline passengers complained of ticket refund issues in December: DGCA

As more Indians are warming up to air travel amid the pandemic, the country witnessed a 15 percent increase in domestic airline passengers in December 2020. As many as 7.33 million people travelled by air last month against 6.35 million in November.

However, several Indians are yet to get a refund of the air tickets they booked during the coronavirus lockdown, the Directorate of General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has informed.

The DGCA has said that 61.4 percent air passengers complained of ticket refund issues in December alone, according to a report by Hindustan Times. Most of these refund related complaints involved India’s national carrier Air India, followed by SpiceJet and TruJet.

The startling number of complaints surrounding refund related issues were raised last month despite a direction from the Supreme Court to all airlines to process the flight fare refund to all passengers who had booked tickets during the lockdown.

Speaking about the delay in the refund process, Jay Bhatia, Vice-President, Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI), said: “Air India is refunding the amount through travel agents, but the progress is very slow. At present, immediate refunds are getting processed on our global distribution system (GDS) only below the value of our weekly sales. As for SpiceJet, refunds for groups and series of agents are being processed and will be settled by the end of this month. GoAir has also assured that it would process the refund for all flight tickets booked during lockdown by January-end.”

All this was highlighted after an order was issued by the Supreme Court on June 13, 2020 asking private airlines and the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) to find a way to refund the airfare of passengers whose flights were cancelled during the lockdown. It was then that meetings were held with all the stakeholders in July and it was decided that tickets booked directly by passengers during lockdown would be fully refunded.