Chandigarh: When debt-strapped Jet Airways suspended all its operations last week, thousands of employees were left wondering how they would survive and stranded passengers had to scramble around for other options.
Add to the category of sufferers private travel agents, who have been forced to pay angry customers themselves after their ticket refunds, adding up to crores, have been held up indefinitely after the International Air Transport Association (IATA) suspended the airline’s membership on 18 April. The aggrieved agents say the airline worsened the problem by accepting bookings right till the day its membership was suspended by IATA.
After it suspended all the ticket bookings and transactions of the cash-stripped airways, IATA asked its accredited travel agents to submit their refund claims through its global distribution system tool, the Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP). However, it has not guaranteed a full refund to the agents, who are now being forced to shell out money from their own pockets to customers.
Albert Tjoeng, IATA’s assistant director of corporate communications (Asia Pacific), told HuffPost India that accredited travel agents have been asked to submit their claims for refund through the BSP link system between April 23 and May 20.
“Each individual claim will then be need to be reviewed by Jet Airways, which will approve the amount that qualifies to be refunded (which may not be the same as the claim submitted). As the refund claim submission process is underway, we do not have visibility of the total claim amount,” said Tjoeng, adding that the entire process is expected to take a couple of months.
26/04/19 Rachna Khaira/Huffington Post
To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline
Add to the category of sufferers private travel agents, who have been forced to pay angry customers themselves after their ticket refunds, adding up to crores, have been held up indefinitely after the International Air Transport Association (IATA) suspended the airline’s membership on 18 April. The aggrieved agents say the airline worsened the problem by accepting bookings right till the day its membership was suspended by IATA.
After it suspended all the ticket bookings and transactions of the cash-stripped airways, IATA asked its accredited travel agents to submit their refund claims through its global distribution system tool, the Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP). However, it has not guaranteed a full refund to the agents, who are now being forced to shell out money from their own pockets to customers.
Albert Tjoeng, IATA’s assistant director of corporate communications (Asia Pacific), told HuffPost India that accredited travel agents have been asked to submit their claims for refund through the BSP link system between April 23 and May 20.
“Each individual claim will then be need to be reviewed by Jet Airways, which will approve the amount that qualifies to be refunded (which may not be the same as the claim submitted). As the refund claim submission process is underway, we do not have visibility of the total claim amount,” said Tjoeng, adding that the entire process is expected to take a couple of months.
26/04/19 Rachna Khaira/Huffington Post
0 comments:
Post a Comment