Passengers asked to solve the problem with vouchers for canceled flights

The All-Russian Association of Passengers (PLO) appealed to the Minister of Transport Vitaly Savelyev with a request to solve the problem of unused vouchers for flights canceled during the 2020 pandemic. About it informs “Kommersant” with reference to the association’s letter dated March 20. Its dispatch was confirmed by the head of the PLO, Ilya Zotov.

In April 2020 airlines asked legalize vouchers as a refund option for canceled flights in a force majeure situation. As a result, in July 2020, the government issued a decree according to which vouchers are valid for three years, during which the passenger can use them to buy a new ticket, and after this period, airlines must return money to passengers with interest at the Central Bank rate.

As noted in the PLO, now the validity of the vouchers has already expired, but the airlines still do not return the money to passengers. In this regard, the association turned to the government with a request to solve the problem with the return of funds or extend the validity of the vouchers.

More than 10,000 passengers have expired vouchers, Zotov said. According to a source in the Ministry of Transport, airlines need to return money for at least 100,000 tickets. Zotov specified that the owners “couldn’t or didn’t want to” use the vouchers by the deadline for various reasons, including because they wanted to wait for the refund. Now passengers cannot get a response to their requests after contacting some airlines.

In 2020, Russian airlines started offer customers to issue a voucher as compensation for flights on flights that could not be operated due to the coronavirus pandemic. The first in Russia (since March 27) such a service was offered by the Pobeda airline (100% subsidiary of Aeroflot). The low-cost airline said that the funds for the canceled flight would be credited to the account in the personal account, they could be used to purchase any tickets until July 1, 2021. Later, the company reported that passengers received a refund of 1 billion rubles, another 1 .5 billion rubles they “flew off” on vouchers.