Cebu Pacific pleads for patience over refunds

BUDGET carrier Cebu Pacific (CEB) on Thursday appealed to affected passengers for patience over their refund, saying the company has revamped its procedures to speed up the processing of the pending refund requests that were filed last April.

“To date, we have refunded over P2.4 billion booking cancellations related to Covid-19, equivalent to 50 percent of refund requests received,” the carrier said in a statement, adding that it is committed to complete pending refunds, and will update passengers once these have been processed.

Cebu Pacific is among the airlines worldwide hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic due to the closures of borders and travel restrictions.

Last week, the International Air Transport Association said airlines are expected to lose $84.3 billion this year.

Aviation experts said air carriers around the world are facing extreme financial pressures and are cutting capacity at unparalleled rates in the absence of meaningful passenger demand.

“Some airlines have shut down completely, a portion of these may never return.”

Flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) is also reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic and is set to slash its work force by 2,000 personnel during the next round of job cuts. In March, the flag carrier reduced its manpower by 300 employees, ranging from ground staff to executives.

With no end in sight to the pandemic, the airline expects travel demand to remain “extremely low.”

Cebu Pacific is no exception, saying that currently, “Cebu Pacific is only able to operate 10 percent of its pre-covid network.”

The carrier said since the start of this pandemic it has received an unprecedented number of refund requests due to the f light cancellations brought about by the lockdown.

Cebu Pacific said its original refund process “was not designed to handle this volume of requests, and this resulted in a backlog,” and had since then revamped its procedures to address this.

“We understand how challenging this whole situation is, and we sincerely apologize for the delay,” it said.

At present, Cebu Pacific said refunds may take up to 6 months to process from the time the request was filed.

“We thank our guests for their patience and understanding as we continue to enhance our processes for this to be resolved soonest.”