Due to the high volume of cancellations and refund requests, many airlines are changing their policy of how they refund tickets. These changes also affect marine fares and even refundable tickets may become non-refundable. Our team is doing our best to reflect these changes on our app and help you with your bookings. Here’s what you should know about the situation:
1. What changes are airlines making to their refund policy?
Many airlines have prohibited immediate refunds in the airline reservation systems and instead ask agents to file refunds manually. This is requested in order to control the refund flow and slow down the outflow of cash due to refunds. Some airlines even proceeded to stop refunding tickets completely.
2. Why are some marine fares shown as non-refundable?
This can happen due to one of the following reasons:
- Either the airline decided to stop refunding tickets completely, including marine fares.
- Either the airline does not allow automatic refunds anymore and processes all requests manually. As there is no guarantee that these tickets will still be refunded, they are shown as non-refundable.
3. How does it affect me if an airline stopped automatic refunds?
First of all, it can take substantially longer for the airline to process the refund request. Because of the high volume, this means more than two months. Also, an airline can refuse to refund a ticket or waive cancellation fees for reasons related to the covid-19 crisis.
4. How can I best deal with this?
In order to minimize risks, we strongly recommend you to:
- Avoid booking duplicate tickets for the same passenger (to hold seats for different dates/routes)
- Avoid booking for the same person with a multiple agents to benchmark prices
- Avoid booking flights just to hold seats and reserve the price
5. I cancelled a refundable ticket but it still shows as “Cancellation pending” status
This means we received the request to cancel the flight and cancellation is being processed. In such cases we need to send a manual request to the airline, so the ticket will remain in “Cancellation pending” status until it is processed by the airline.
6. Will I get a refund for my cancelled ticket?
Unfortunately, we have no control over airline policies of refunds, which may change at any time. Our team does our best to help you with, but we cannot guarantee refund in case an airline changes its policy. Thank you for your understanding.
7. What if my flight was cancelled by the airline?
Depending on the airline, they may provide you with full refund, or process ticket according to their cancellation rules (non-refundable tickets will remain non-refundable). It also may be that they refuse refund at all.
8. What will happen next?
As always, our team at C Teleport will continue doing our utmost to support you. Once airlines return to their previous policy of refund, we will accordingly make changes to our platform. In the meantime, if you have further questions, please reach out to us through email or chat.
