US orders AI to refund $121m for cancelled America flights to customers; fines it $1.4m for delay

NEW DELHI: The United States has ordered Air India to pay $121.5 million as refunds and $1.4 million as penalties for extreme delays in giving refunds to passengers for flights mostly cancelled during Covid. Apart from AI, the America’s department of transportation (DoT) has asked five more foreign airlines — Frontier, TAP Portugal, Aero Mexico, EI AI, and Avianca — to collectively pay $600 million in refunds and penalties.

“The US DoT… has determined that Air India routinely failed to provide timely refunds to passengers for flights to and from the US that the carrier cancelled or significantly changed.… Since March 2020… (we) received over 1,900 complaints (regarding AI refunds). AI’s stated policy has been to provide refunds to consumers for flights it cancelled or significantly changed. However, a review of the complaints filed with the department revealed that in practice AI took more than 100 days to process most of the refund requests that it received,” the DoT order dated November 14, 2022, says.