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Emirates ready to welcome ‘millions’ from Covid-refunded tickets

Dubai-based carrier refunded 2.7 million tickets last year and through to March 31, 2021, worth around $2.7bn

By ITP
Revealed: how much Emirates has had to refund due to coronavirus impact

Since the pandemic hit, Emirates said it has invested additional resources to ramp up its processing capability, adding it also continues to work with industry partners to facilitate refunds for those who have booked their Emirates flights through travel agents.

Dubai-based Emirates Airline is waiting on ‘millions’ of refunded tickets being used once global travel returns to some sort of normality.

Chief commercial officer Adnan Kazim told Arabian Business that some 2.7 million tickets were refunded throughout 2020 and up until March 31 this year, worth almost AED9.8 billion ($2.7bn), as borders closed and flights were grounded to contain the spread of coronavirus.

But as the world very gradually reopens, Kazim insisted that the pent-up demand to get back into the skies was definitely real.

He said: “For sure. Today we have over millions of tickets which are open tickets, people are holding their tickets as vouchers or through the open ticket. People are waiting for that moment to come in to travel and soon, as they get that that clarity, it became so short notice.”

According to a recent YouGov Global Travel survey, six in ten surveyed respondents (59 percent) in the UAE and Saudi Arabia said they took a leisure trip (domestic or international) in 2020. In 2021, an appetite for travel has improved, and more than seven in 10 (72 percent) residents said they have already or intend to travel this year.

Despite the loss of key markets, including the UK, Australia, South Africa, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, due to Covid travel restrictions, to date Emirates has recovered 120 passenger destinations – 130 including cargo routes.

Emirates’ chief commercial officer Adnan Kazim

Kazim previously revealed the aim was to increase capacity up to 50 percent in the summer, with a view to ramping that up to 70 percent by the winter.

And he is optimistic this will be the case. He said: “We do see that gradually things will open up and once this happens we’re seeing a spike happen.

“When we signed the air bubble with the UK we saw the spike in the flights. We had five A380s full of passengers, point-to-point, between the UK and Dubai coming. When we opened up a little bit of the Maldives, we saw the demand that created.

“People are desperate to travel, they are just waiting for that moment to come in and as soon as things open up people will travel.”

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