Cash crunch pits airlines against customers in refund spats

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The fight to survive the Covid-19 crisis is pitting airlines across the globe against their grounded customers.

Regulations in the U.S. and Europe generally call for carriers to offer passengers a refund if a flight is canceled, with exceptions for circumstances like bad weather. It happens in normal times, but country lockdowns have dissolved schedules for weeks, with airlines parking their fleets and guarding their cash as revenue withers. Their customers are flooding Facebook and Twitter to complain they can’t get their money back for canceled trips.


Tamara Watts, from Northumberland, England, said she was due to fly to the U.S. for a family road trip through California, Nevada and Arizona, before jetting to New York and then home. With the pandemic spreading, the flights were canceled by the Dutch arm of Air France-KLM.

“I called them and they were just robotic, repeating the same information, that KLM has decided not to give refunds and offer a voucher,” said Watts, 32. “They wouldn’t deviate from the repetition and wouldn’t pass me over to anyone else. Just said I could log a complaint but that wouldn’t get me a refund.”

The U.S. Transportation Department is receiving more complaints as well, from people who say they were refused refunds for canceled flights. On Friday, it issued an enforcement notice ordering airlines to pay up.

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