Passengers, agents still waiting on R3 billion in refunds from SAA

The Association Of Southern African Travel Agents (Asata) has expressed its concern over tickets refunds that the South African Airways (SAA) is yet to issue to its customers.

This is after SAA explained that a refund option was available to passengers who bought plane tickets, however, the measure was taken in effort to manage the airline’s voucher process.

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Asata CEO Otto De Vries has argued that SAA had already approved approximately R3 billion in its business rescue plan to cover tickets that were not used by the customers.

“R3 billion was allocated to cover what we call ‘unflown ticket liability’, which is specifically for flights that were booked and paid for either through bookings with consumers or travel agents that had not had that service rendered.

“What we cannot get any clarity on is whether the tranches that have been paid to date as part of the Business Rescue Plan indeed cover the ticket liability,” De Vries told CapeTalk.

According to De Vries, the R3 billion was approved to cover the costs of the vouchers of customers who intend to travel using the airline or the cover the cost of those who wanted a refund instead.

He said Asata was looking to start filing refund applications on behalf of its customers.

“Cold water was thrown on that within 24 hours and here we are with the same level of uncertainty we had before,” he said.

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De Vries further reiterated that SAA knew how much to pay out in unflown tickets due to the amount being included in the rescue plan after the airline came out last week to say that it first needed to work through on how much it owed to the customers.

He added that Asata was concerned on whether the vouchers would be able to be used by the customers or whether SAA will even be flying the routes booked.

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