Dubai’s Emirates refunds $1.4 billion to customers affected by COVID-19 travel restrictions

Emirates reopened commercial flights on May 21 with services to an initial nine cities. (AFP file photo)

• More than 1.4 million refunds requests have been completed since March

DUBAI: Emirates has issued $1.4 billion in refunds to customers affected by COVID-19 travel restrictions, the Dubai airline said in a statement.
More than 1.4 million refund requests have been completed since March, representing 90 percent of the Dubai airline’s backlog.
This includes all requests received from customers around the world up until the end of June, except for a few cases which require further manual review, Emirates said, even as it increased its capacity to process refund requests
“We understand that from our customers’ standpoint, each pending refund request is one too many. We are committed to honoring refunds and are trying our utmost to clear the massive and unprecedented backlog that was caused by the pandemic,” Tim Clark, the president of Emirates, said in the statement
“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. We are grateful to our customers for their patience and understanding.”
Emirates reopened commercial flights on May 21 with services to an initial nine cities – London, Frankfurt, Paris, Milan, Madrid, Chicago, Toronto, Sydney and Melbourne – and has since widened its network to 84 destinations.
The Middle East’s largest carrier, which has a fleet of 270 wide-bodied aircraft, halted operations in late March after the coronavirus pandemic stalled global air travel.