Anna Bradley-Smith  |  June 9, 2021

Category: Covid-19

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UK Regulator Threatens British Airways with Legal Action Over Refunds
(Photo Credit: Fasttailwind/Shutterstock)

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched a probe into British Airways PLC and Ryanair DAC to determine whether the companies broke the law by denying passengers refunds for flights cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The consumer protection watchdog announced the probe after an investigation revealed the airlines were offering either vouchers or the opportunity to rebook flights affected by the pandemic, but were not offering ticket refunds.

“Customers booked these flights in good faith, and were legally unable to take them due to circumstances entirely outside of their control,” CMA Chief Executive Andrea Coscelli said. “We believe these people should have been offered their money back.”

She said that while the authority understood that airlines had had a tough time during the pandemic, “people should not be left unfairly out of pocket for following the law.”

The CMA said that both British Airways and Ryanair could have breached consumer law by declining to refund customers, and the watchdog was trying to solve the issue with the companies, Law360 reports. Redress could include customer refunds, the authority said.

In an email to Law360, a Ryanair spokesperson said that the company approached refund requests case by case and “paid refunds in justified cases.”

“Since June 2020, all our customers have also had the ability to rebook their flights without paying a change fee, and millions of our U.K. customers have availed of this option,” the spokesperson wrote.

A spokesperson for British Airways told Paddle Your Kanoo that the government was “seeking to punish further an industry that is on its knees.”

“Any action taken against our industry will only serve to destabilise it, with potential consequences for jobs, business, connectivity and the UK economy.”

The spokesperson added that British Airways had provided full refunds to around three million customers and offered voucher and rebooking options to millions more.

At the height of the pandemic, British Airways was hit with a class action lawsuit in the U.S. due to declining customer refunds. Stephen Ide said that he purchased a ticket from British Airways for $706.46 to fly from Boston to London, but received an email from British Airways before the flight notifying him it had been canceled.

Ide says he contacted customer service in order to obtain a refund for his ticket, but was unable to connect with a representative to inquire about the British Airways cancelation policy.

Have you had issues getting refunded for flights that were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic? Let us know in the comments section!


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