Jyoti Mayal, President of TAAI states that due to the ongoing global pandemic, Covid2019, airlines
have stopped operations. Globally, commercial passenger aviation business has come to a standstill.
The worst affected are our members, who are engaged in the business of airline ticketing, package tours,
hotel reservations, sightseeing bookings, etc., being the Travel and Tourism Sector.
Due to the travel restrictions placed by governments across the world, customers/travellers want to
cancel their bookings and claim back refunds for tickets booked by them. The global crisis is scary and to
remain healthy and safe people want to ensure they have adequate money to survive as recession has
set in. Hence, travellers want their blocked monies back for the underutilized services of travel, which shall
not be undertaken by them.
We state that, the Travel Agents/Tour Operators have paid 100% to the airlines, for all tickets that have
been issued, till date. Our member agents are wanting to process the refunds, for the tickets issued by
them for their customers, but majority of IATA member airlines, have disabled the refunding mechanism
on the GDS systems for agents. Agents are now required to manually process refunds through Refund
Authority with IATA, whereby the airlines are being non-committal on the date and amount of repayment
of airfare.
Most Low-Cost Carriers too are not refunding the airfares and are creating a credit shell favouring the
passenger, to be used for future dates.
TAAI has raised strong objections on the same with all airlines, as well as with IATA. We have
asked the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) to direct the airlines to refund all monies. Most airlines are offering credit vouchers in the name of the passengers which are valid for 365 days and a couple of them are offering credit vouchers for upto 760 days.
Further, additional funds of the agents are blocked with the airlines which have been paid by way of
advances in float accounts of low-cost carriers operating in India.
Therefore, All Refunds / Credits / Vouchers shall be given to the Customer/Traveler, by our
member agencies, only after the same is received from the Airlines/IATA, she added.
TAAI – Vice President, Jay Bhatia, informed that, post April 15, 2020, if things come to normalcy, the
refund process, if authorised by the airlines, may take from 15days to atleast 3 months, depending on the
airline and how the situation across the globe remains. Currently, most of the airlines are not giving
waivers on the cancellation charges. They are not refunding the amounts in cash. They are only giving
credit vouchers favouring the passenger, whereby name change shall not be permitted.
