On its official website, Iata’s CEO stated a short while back, that airlines owed more than $35bn in refunds. In that same statement he pleads: “airlines need time”, reaching out to the global travel agent community to create structures for managing a voucher system in lieu of cash refunds.
The driving issue is the plight of the airlines and how they will survive – airlines require time and must conserve their cash in order to save jobs. Agent partners are called upon to join hands to come to the assistance of distressed airlines.
Clearly, Iata’s agent “partners” have experienced and are still experiencing the same anguish, with no income for these past three months and more. Yet an airline, British Airways, still has the audacity to issue ADMs as reported in Travel News, June 4, notwithstanding that the tickets were issued in compliance with BA’s COVID-19 policy.
Surely, surely, BA and any other airline that issues ADMs at a time like this, know just how this industry is bleeding. Their agent “partners” have joined hands in the spirit of the survival of this industry. How can BA be so crass, so insensitive and so unsympathetic as to issue ADMs during the COVID-19 crisis?
This must speak volumes for this airline. And more volumes that Iata pleads for relief from paying refunds, yet allows ADMs (which are CASH claims) to continue to be issued. Shame on this airline and shame on Iata’s hypocrisy.
Allan Wolman
CEO XL Rosebank Travel
