The rights of EU air passengers have regularly been breached by airlines during the pandemic, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) found on Tuesday.
In spite of being legally required to compensate passengers for cancelled flights, many airlines had forced people to accept vouchers instead, the ECA said.
After governments closed borders across the bloc, around 7,000 air routes were closed in the European airport network, the auditors said.
Tens of millions of passengers saw their travel plans cancelled between March 2020 and March 2021 after 70 per cent of flights were scrapped.
“The passengers were actually left in the dark about their rights and were losing money as a consequence,” auditor Annemie Turtelboom said in a press briefing.
While many passengers did not receive cash compensation in the time frame EU law prescribes seven days if it’s a simple flight, or 14 days if it’s part of a package airlines received billions of euros of state aid.
Some passengers were not reimbursed at all, or only received vouchers instead of cash.
EU countries had spent a total of 35 billion euros on supporting airlines, Turtelboom said.
Ahead of ECA’s report, the commission on Monday called on airlines to improve how they handled the cancellation of flights.
For example, airlines should clear their backlogs for compensating passengers, according to the commission, and compensate passengers within seven days.
“Airlines need to respect the rights of consumers when flights are cancelled,” Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said in a press release.
