PAL refunds whopping P12 billion worth of canceled flights

The pandemic has heavily struck the travel industry and as it gradually recovers, the damages are still there to be dealt with. According to Bloomberg, Philippine Airlines (PAL), the country’s flag carrier, has received a whopping total of P15.9 billion ($329 million) in refund requests. This gives them a financial burden of gaining little to no income due to the pandemic and the responsibility of refunding a great number of tickets.

“We are doing all we can to cope with the massive deluge of refund requests that we received after the global pandemic forced us to cancel more than 60,000 PAL flights since March 2020, affecting over 1.3 million passengers,” the airline unit of tycoon Lucio Tan said.

“The loss of revenues deprived us of liquidity to make prompt refund payments, even as lockdown restrictions posed serious staffing and logistical limitations,” it said.

“The loss of revenues deprived us of liquidity to make prompt refund payments, even as lockdown restrictions posed serious staffing and logistical limitations,” said a PAL statement, from Bloomberg.

On the other hand, Cebu Pacific, also disclosed that they have refunded over P2 billion’s worth of canceled flights to their customers.

Cebu Pacific and Philippine Airlines are operating at less than 15 percent capacity at the moment because of the ongoing health protocols. Hopefully, they pick themselves back up from this vast financial loss as well as the other industries in this crucial time.