Irish Government backs airlines in battle over customer refunds
 

Irish Government backs airlines in battle over customer refunds

IRELAND is one of 12 countries that have put their names to a letter calling on the European Commission to change the rules on refunds for cancelled airline flights.

It comes after both Ryanair and Aer Lingus refused to comment last week when asked if they were lobbying the Government to have the rules changed.

The joint letter, which is also signed by the governments in France and the Netherlands, points out that European Commission Regulation 261/2004 and “its obligation to reimburse cancelled tickets in cash, if the passenger so decides, places airlines in a difficult situation where they are facing a serious cash flow challenge”.

The letter calls for the rules to be changed temporarily to allow airlines to issue vouchers instead of refunds.


Irish Government backs airlines in battle over customer refunds
https://www.independent.ie/business/...-39167865.html

The 12 countries are: Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Greece, France, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, The Netherlands, Poland and Portugal.

https://www.permanentrepresentations...rline-vouchers

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...b864bef3bc.jpg

Well if the airlines feel it's okay to take payment for a service at some indeterminate time in the future (if they can at all), I wonder if they'd be ok with me paying them for a flight I've taken at some equally indeterminate point in the future. I'd be happy to issue them with a voucher to say I'm good for it, and pay up after 12 months after the flight at most.

;)

If you pay for a service thru a company... that comp;any does not provide the service.. you are entitled to a full cash refund...
I know the airlines are in a jam.. but so are the customers that payed for the tickets..

It's no wonder why the airlines want to get out of refunds. There are about the be a lot more cancelled flights.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...4d97113a84.png

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Vaguely on-topic and related question: How much of the Aer Lingus fleet is leased and are the aircraft leasing companies extending payment terms and/or taking a lot of pain at the moment?

EI has always favoured to own aircraft outright, majority are owned, but the most recent arrivals are all leased. So the 321NEO's are all leased. All C reg hulls are owned by EI.

So EI could sale and leaseback parts of the fleet, but will struggle to find a buyer in the current market as airlines fail globally and demand collapse. Back at 9/11 EI owned everything, and struggled to raise cash despite having a stack of almost new A330's and A320's on the apron, they did managed to do deal on a A330 (EWR?).

Any aircraft which has a lease expiring in 2020 will be handed back very quickly, but I'd imagine EI will fly leased aircraft to the max to get value out of them to preserve the cycles on the owned aircraft.

Aircraft leasing companies are not known for being generous, that said they always worked on the assumption there was a queue of customers available willing to pay, thats not the case today, so any cash in is better than being stuck with an asset parked somewhere where it is costing the leasing company cash. The leasing companies appear to have taken over Norwegian in an effort to keep it going (and get paid)

It seems very unclear that the EC could retroactively repeal its own law. Forward-looking and with unanimity, for sure.

This simply represent the government's lack of political will to bail out EI (the cost of which would be covered pro rata by taxpayers) rather than letting individual consumers bear the burden because they were unlucky enough to hold tickets at the wrong time.

This is all the more so because it is entirely unclear what EI operations will look like in future and many people who must travel will not be able to do so on EI and thus a credit/voucher is of no use.

Fortunately for those people who held tickets to or from the US, the US has no intention of changing its rule and EI remains obligated to initiate a refund within 7 days of a request.