With lockdown in place and borders shut, travel plans have been halted and altogether canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That means thousands of would-be travelers have filed refunds for their now canceled flights. Cebu Pacific, the country’s budget carrier, has refunded over P2.4 billion as a result of canceled bookings, as per its refund update on September 17.
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Since lockdown began, the airlines has received an “unprecedented number of refund requests.” Despite the fact that its refund process was not prepared to handle such a huge amount of refund requests, the airlines has still managed to refund over P2.4 billion in canceled rickets.
The airlines admits that there have been backlogs and has only refunded 50 percent of requests so far. Cebu Pacific is still working through the refund requests filed in April.
“As many know, the tourism and aviation industries have been among the worst hit by COVID-19 and currently, Cebu Pacific is only able to operate 10% of its pre-COVID network,” said Cebu Pacific.
"We understand how challenging this whole situation is, and we sincerely apologize for the delay."
According to Forbes, Cebu Pacific has been operating at just two percent capacity, in stark contrast to its usual capacity of 75 percent. This has caused Cebu Air’s revenues to drop by 61 percent. In an interview with Forbes, JG Summit CEO Lance Gokongwei projected that the airlines will operate at half capacity by mid-2021, but will have to wait until 2021 for operations to normalize and recover.
JG Summit is the parent company of Cebu Air and Summit Media, the publishing company of Esquire Philippines.
