I am told that additional resources are being put into the dealing with passenger fallout from the crisis and that the majority of applications for refunds will be processed within seven to 14 business days, ie up to three weeks. After all, in the case of long-haul flights for a family, you are talking about several thousand euro being locked up in bureaucracy.Īnyway, the good news for Ms J McD is that her refund has now been processed following our inquiry and you should receive it in the coming days. They could, reasonably, set a time – say one month – and say that they are not in a position to handle follow-up queries within that window.īut it is only fair that once you get further out than that, there is some process to give passengers comfort that their claim has not simply got lost in the system. This is not reasonable customer service regardless of the pressure the airline is under. They are being directed to file refund applications online and cautioned against submitting multiple requests.Īnd there appears to be absolutely no way of inquiring about the state of play with an ongoing refund or voucher application even when weeks or months have passed with no information. This is a recurring frustration for passengers. Her particular frustration is that she has not been able “to get through to a live person”. Ms J McD on the US west coast says she is still waiting for a refund for a flight that was cancelled over a month ago. Apparently this means the voucher/refund request had to be processed by both Aer Lingus and Avios, compounding the delay. The issue here appears to be that the tickets were booked through the Avios loyalty rewards programme which allows you build up points to apply against ticket prices when you shop in certain stores and when you buy tickets.
The good news is that Aer Lingus tells me your booking “has been refunded” – I assume that means the voucher has been processed – and you should receive it in the coming days.
With the airline now processing refunds, she wonders how long more she will have to wait? She has been in touch with the call centre “numerous” times and has been told the voucher is coming soon but that has been the position for months now, she says. Ms OD has been waiting for over four months for a credit voucher from Aer Lingus. Other queries seem equally straightforward. Unfortunately, the experience of Ms TQ and others seems to show that has not proved to be the case thus far.
#Aer lingus refund full#
Last week, I was told those criteria were as follows: “Aer Lingus customers with bookings that have been impacted by a schedule change of over two hours, are entitled to a full refund.” So the fact that someone is on a Saver ticket – a discounted economy ticket, I gather – should not in any way preclude them getting a refund if they otherwise meet the criteria. In the case of Ms TQ, whose case the airline are still investigating, a spokeswoman for Aer Lingus has once again stated categorically: “The type of ticket does not influence someone’s entitlement to a refund.” That may be so but some of the queries we have received do not seem overly complex and it is clear that some of the information people have been given – where they have been given any information at all – is simply wrong. It says that “to date in excess of 90 per cent of the requests received have been processed” with those remaining “typically more complex”. In the absence of normal business, airlines have had to turn to State supports while also cutting staff or putting them on shorter time.īut, all too often in the chaos, passengers feel that they have been forgotten.Īer Lingus, in its defence, says that it “has added additional resources to our teams and introduced new technologies to improve processing times”. Widespread travel restrictions have meant not only that most flights were grounded for an extended period but also that people abandoned all bar essential future travel plans amid uncertainty over future restrictions and of the path of the virus itself. In fairness, it must be acknowledged that coronavirus has been a disastrous time for airlines.
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