One of Britain’s biggest airlines has been fined almost £1 million by the U.S. government over claims it failed to pay refunds for cancelled flights during COVID-19.
In legal documents from the U.S. Transportation Department, British Airways was said to have failed to “provide timely refunds to passengers” for abandoned or rescheduled flights to and from the country during the pandemic.
The airline said it had “acted lawfully at all times” after being hit with the $1.1 million (£878,000) fine on Thursday, and refuted the claims.
A consent order from the department read: “From March to November 2020, British Airways’ website instructed consumers to contact the carrier via phone to ‘discuss refund options,’ including for flights the carrier cancelled or significantly changed.
“However, consumers were unable to get through to customer service agents when calling the carrier for several months during this period because British Airways failed to maintain adequate functionality of its customer service phone lines.
“There was also no way to submit a refund request through the carrier’s website during this period.”
The U.S. department also accused British Airways of having “misleading information” on its website from March to Nov. 2020 which “inadvertently request travel vouchers instead of refunds.”
5 Million Refunds
The U.S. Transportation Department said the UK airline has received “thousands more complaints” and refund requests from consumers.“British Airways’ failure to establish, for several months, a readily accessible method for consumers to request refunds for flights the carrier cancelled or significantly changed caused significant challenges and delays in thousands of consumers receiving required refunds,” the legal document read.
The department said the fine “establishes a strong deterrent to future similar unlawful practices.”
British Airways is being credited just under £500,000 towards the penalty because in 2020 and 2021 it paid more than $40 million (£32 million) in refunds to customers with non-refundable tickets.
The airline said: “We’re very sorry that at the height of the unprecedented pandemic—when we were unfortunately forced to cancel thousands of flights and close some call centres due to government restrictions—our customers experienced slightly longer wait times to reach customer service teams.
“During this period, we acted lawfully at all times and offered customers the flexibility of rebooking travel on different dates, or claiming a refund if their flights were cancelled.”
The airline added that to date, it had issued more than five million refunds since the start of the pandemic.
Travel Chaos
The huge fine is the latest controversy to hit the hugely popular airline after an IT failure led to its customers facing cancellations last week.Half-term holiday plans for thousands of families were thrown into disarray after British Airways was forced to cancel dozens of flights across May 25 and 26.
Around 16,000 passengers were affected by the cancellations.
There were also widespread delays to other flights, and some passengers were unable to check in online.
In a statement released last week, a British Airways spokeswoman said: “While the vast majority of our flights continue to operate today, we have cancelled some of our short-haul flights from Heathrow due to the knock-on effect of a technical issue that we experienced yesterday.
“We’ve apologised to customers whose flights have been affected and offered them the option to rebook to an alternative flight with us or another carrier, or request a refund.”
The airline added that where possible cancellations have been focused on routes with several daily flights, enabling passengers to rebook at alternative times.
Heathrow said the problem was not related to a strike by security officers at Terminal 5.
British Airways has suffered a series of IT failures in recent years.
It was forced to cancel flights in the run-up to Christmas 2022 due to a problem with its systems.
