Six months ago travel came to a blinding halt as coronavirus was officially labelled a pandemic by the World Health Organisation.
Countries shut their borders, flights were cancelled and many were left stranded in foreign countries as a result.
As flights were put on hold, many who had trips planned flocked to get their airfares refunded from airlines – and Dubai’s airline Emirates was no exception.
Half a year after the pandemic engulfed the world in March, Emirates has confirmed it has paid back Dhs5 billion in ticket refunds since then.
In a statement issued by the Dubai-based airline, it was announced that 1.4 million refunds had been processed which they had received up until the end of June – a figure which represents 90 per cent of the refund backlog.
Emirates returns over AED 5 billion (US$ 1.4 billion) to customers in COVID-19 related travel refunds and clears 90% of its refunds backlog, making strong and steady progress on its commitment to complete pending refunds. https://t.co/NVwmW2f0OA pic.twitter.com/YLEUthEAtF
— Emirates Airline (@emirates) September 7, 2020
“We are committed to honouring refunds and are trying our utmost to clear the massive and unprecedented backlog that was caused by the pandemic,” Tim Clark, the airline’s president, said. “Most cases are straightforward, and these we will process quickly.
“But there are cases which will take a bit more time for our customer teams to manually review and complete.”
In the last few months, things have been slowly returning to normal for the airline. As of right now, flights to 80 destinations have recommenced for Emirates, with the latest addition being to Amman, Jordan.
In a further sign the airline is recovering, Emirates announced they would be returning staff members’ basic salaries to full pay after having implemented pay cuts.
