(This story originally appeared in on Dec 11, 2020)

NEW DELHI: The government on Friday said airlines have refunded almost three-fourth of tickets sold for flights cancelled during the Covid lockdown. In all, Rs 3,200 crore have been refunded to passengers and the rest are being processed, the aviation ministry said.

While, tickets worth Rs 219 crore have been converted into credit shells voluntarily by passengers for future travel.

Nearly one-third of the refund amount has come from India’s biggest airline (by market share), IndiGo, alone. The low cost carrier had earlier this week said it has already paid Rs 1,000 crore as refunds, representing 90% of the total amount owed to its customers for cancelled flights.

IndiGo says it will “complete payment against all pending credit shells (and refunds) latest by January 31, 2021.”

In a tweet, the aviation ministry said: “Pursuant to Supreme Court’s order on ticket refund, 74.3% of total 55,23,940 PNRs amounting to Rs 3,200 crore have been refunded. Rest are in process. 2,06,119 credit shells worth Rs 219 crore created by airlines with consent of passengers. (We are) constantly monitoring the situation.”

Earlier this week, IndiGo CEO Ronojoy Dutta had said: “The sudden onset of Covid-19 and the resulting lockdown, brought our operations to a complete halt by the end of March of this year. As our incoming cash flow dried up, we were unable to immediately process refunds for cancelled flights and had to create credit shells for the refunds that were due to our customers.”

“However, with the resumption of operations and a steady increase in demand for air travel, our priority has been to refund the credit shell amounts in an expedited manner. We are pleased to commit that we will disburse the full 100% credit shell payments latest by January 31, 2021. We would like to thank all our customers who stood by us for their patience and understanding during this unprecedented crisis,” Dutta had said.

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