Volotea, the airline of mid and small-sized European cities, has confirmed today that all pending refunds for flights cancelled during the period from March to June, will be processed before the end of this month. The airline, heavily affected by the Covid-19 crisis, has specified that reimbursements were initiated in March and that all refunds will be completed by July ^31st.

Volotea shared today its refunds plan for all its passengers affected by the Covid-19 crisis and associated travel and operational restrictions, whose flights were cancelled between March and June. The airline started this process in March and all the pending ticket refunds will be completed by the end of July. The refund process has been much slower than expected as the airline navigated an abrupt lack of revenues in the last three months, together with heavy resource constraints at the Contact Center, all due to the Covid-19 restrictions.

The airline has also shared the positive results of its flexibility policy, put in place during the crisis:  close to 30% of passengers have been able to reschedule their flights for free and most Volotea’s clients have chosen either this flexibility option or the vouchers offered by the airline. Only 13% of Volotea' s clients have declined the options proposed.

 “Volotea is fully committed to its customers and to fulfilling its obligations to them. During this unprecedented crisis we have put everything in place to manage our clients’ needs in the best possible way by offering free flexibility, vouchers and processing refunds when requested. The number of requests has been, like this crisis, unprecedented and extremely numerous, and it has been hard to keep going with our usual service levels. Despite this complex situation, our customer service has been working hard to manage our customer requests in the best possible timings. We are very happy to announce today that by the end of the month, the last customers who were waiting for a refund will have their application processed.” said Alex de Jesus, Chief Experience Officer.

ABOUT VOLOTEA (PRE COVID-19 FIGURES)

Volotea is one of the fastest-growing independent airlines in Europe, increasing year-on-year its fleet, routes served and seats offered. Since 2012, Volotea has carried more than 25 million passengers across Europe. The airline expects between 8.5 and 9.0 million passengers in 2020.

For 2020, Volotea is adding six aircraft Airbus 319s and 62 new routes to offer a line-up of 354 short-haul city-pairs among 96 medium and small-sized airports in 15 countries at very competitive prices.

Volotea operates its network with 39 aircraft, 25 Airbus A319s and 14 Boeing 717s, based in 16 European mid-sized capitals: Venice, Nantes, Bordeaux, Palermo, Strasbourg, Asturias, Verona, Toulouse, Genoa, Bilbao, Marseille, Athens, Cagliari, Lyon, Naples and Hamburg.

Volotea’s Hamburg base has been opened to operate Airbus’ shuttle service, recently awarded. Bases in Lyon and Naples are to be launched in 2020.

To enable its growth, Volotea has opened recruitment processes to cover over 200 employment positions in France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Germany. In 2020 Volotea will count with 1,500 employees.

More info at Volotea.com 

Follow us on LinkedIn