Is it too early to apply for a refund of flights booked for June?

Simon Calder answers your questions on cancellations, BA routes being cut, and when we’re likely to be able to travel again

Alicante won’t be seeing any holidaying Britons in the near future

Q You reported that Ryanair will not be flying anything like normally until July. Does that mean I can start applying now for my money back for a flight from Bournemouth to Alicante in June – and how long will it take for me to get the cash?

Dave W

A On Friday, Europe’s biggest budget airline told investors that it will not operate more than the current skeleton service until July. Ryanair’s present schedule consists mainly of services between the UK and the Republic of Ireland, with a few departures from Stansted to Continental destinations.

I see no prospect of your flight going ahead, nor almost all others in May and June. But that does not mean you can start the process now of recovering your air fare.

To maintain some sort of order in the process, airlines including Ryanair are making “rolling” cancellations: cancelling a week or two of flights at a time. Bear in mind that Ryanair intended to fly more than 25 million people in May and June. Dividing the task into manageable components makes sense.

My flight in April was cancelled nearly a month in advance, which meant I could begin the refund application process. I think you can expect about four weeks’ warning. Don’t try to cancel if the flight is still shown as live; you will lose most or all of your money.

Once the notification comes in, in theory Ryanair has a week to return your money. There is no chance whatsoever that this will happen. You may feel under pressure to accept a voucher, which can be issued automatically.

If you are confident you will want to fly on Ryanair reasonably soon you might choose this option to save hassle. Otherwise opt for a refund – which may involve getting involved with a “chat bot” online. Once you have registered intention to take up your right to your money back, all you can do is wait.

Michael O’Leary, the boss of Ryanair, says there could be a delay of up to six months for May refunds – so you may not see your cash this side of Christmas. You will get your money back eventually, but there is no easy way to speed up the process.

An Easter trip to Canada is off, obviously (AFP/Getty)

Q For what I hoped would be an Easter holiday, I booked a UK-Canada itinerary via Amsterdam, using British Airways and Air Canada, through an online travel agent. Obviously it didn’t go ahead. Now the agent is telling me to claim my money back from the airlines, and they are telling me to claim from the agent. Help! Who should I expect to get a refund from?

Jane K

A Online travel agents can sometimes provide exceptional value for trips that involve two airlines who do not normally cooperate, but which have some “distressed inventory” to offload. I imagine a great price was what tempted you to choosing this particular combination.

I have also travelled between Canada and the UK using Air Canada and BA via Amsterdam. They are members of rival alliances – Star and Oneworld respectively. But to fill seats that would otherwise be empty, it was worth them charging only £110 for a one-way trip; I imagine Air Canada took at least three-quarters of that. They sell through online travel agents to avoid publishing absurdly low fares themselves.

But as you have discovered: when things don’t go well, online travel agents are not always a great support.

Under the European air passengers’ rights rules, you were due a full refund within a week of the non-departure of the flight.

Almost all airlines are ignoring the law for the time being, and taking as long as they like – as well, in some cases, as assuring passengers that they can expect only a voucher rather than money back.

Add an extra layer of complexity in the shape of an agent with (often) a dubious reputation for customer service, and reclaiming your cash can get trickier still.

Your contract is with the agent, and that firm should be pursuing your refund. If you can afford to wait a while, that is what I would advise – the alternative is to spend more time and energy on frustrating engagement with organisations that are already overstretched.

Personally, at this stage all I would do is email the agent to say that it owes the money and that you are expecting a full refund. If necessary you can try claiming through your credit-card firm – though this may not work because there is no direct relationship between the card firm and the airlines, only with the agent.

Ultimately you may need to pursue this debt through Money Claim Online – but at present a legal claim is unlikely to get you very far.

The BA route to New York from London City may be cut (AP)

Q After the announcement on British Airways’ 12,000 redundancies, you speculated about some of the routes you felt BA would cut. Why would they give up the London City to New York route. Twelve seats shouldn’t be hard to fill?

Dean W

A It is reasonable to surmise that British Airways will cull routes roughly in proportion to the scale of the job cuts it has proposed – which amount to 29 per cent of its staff. Let’s hope that it’s not so bad. But even if the redundancies turn out to be “only” 25 per cent, that is a lot of services to cut back.

I think that outlier operations will be first for the chop. This particular link, BA1 from the Docklands airport to New York JFK, and BA2 in the reverse direction, is a one-plane service. It uses an Airbus A318, the only one in the BA fleet. Because of the constraints of London City airport, it must stop to refuel in Shannon in Ireland. Although that allows travellers to clear US border formalities while the plane gets replenished, it still adds extra time to the journey and cost to the operation.

Pilots from Heathrow do the flying and cabin crew from Gatwick look after the passengers. All too often the inbound gets diverted because of low visibility, usually to Gatwick – which is a complete pain for the high-spenders who want to be in the City of London or Canary Wharf rather than leafy Sussex.

All of that would be bearable if full loads (32 seats, incidentally, not 12) were guaranteed. But I am afraid in the coronavirus recession, that is most unlikely. Executives whose firms previously invested upwards of £5,000 in frequent round trips are likely to find themselves using Zoom instead much of the time.

British Airways will encourage City and Docklands passengers who are heading to New York to fly from Heathrow instead – helping to improve the loads on its JFK services. When finally the much-delayed Crossrail opens from Canary Wharf and Liverpool Street to Heathrow, it will provide much faster and reliable access to the UK’s busiest airport – though not to BA’s Terminal 5.

Santorini sun: dreams of a Mediterranean holiday seem far away (iStock) (iStockphoto)

Q Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, you appear to be getting less and less sure about when we will be able to go on holiday abroad again. Why?

Becky T

A My view is getting bleaker by the day, I’m sorry to say, because of the signals I am reading. When the dreadful coronavirus pandemic really started to take hold in the second half of March, I was optimistic that by the end of May people would be travelling on normal vacations from the UK; going to some, if not all, of our traditional summer favourites in and around the Mediterranean. Even though May is here, that prospect looks more and more unlikely.

Five tests have to be passed before you can holiday abroad. First, you have to be able to get to the airport, which under current lockdown rules is impossible for non-critical purposes. Next, the UK government must lift its warning against all but essential travel abroad. Third, an airline/tour operator needs to be prepared to take you to your destination.

The next hurdle: the destination country must want to let you in. Finally, you have to tolerate whatever entry conditions apply when you come back to the UK; this could include going into quarantine for 14 days.

If the last test comes into effect, it will write off the summer: no one is rationally going to spend a week on a beach if they return to be handed a “stay home notice” telling them to stay in their home for two weeks. But assuming the government follows the advice of medical experts, the present policy of simply advising arriving passengers what to do if they become symptomatic will continue.

Making that assumption, the consensus in the UK travel industry is that the first time we will see holidays at any significant scale will be July. Even then, the signals are that departures are unlikely to amount to 40 per cent of a normal July. Partly that is because our regular destinations will open up at different times. The noises coming from many nations suggest that they will be imposing their own bans which could push the start-up further back to August, even into September, by which stage the vast majority of the summer season has been written off.

But I will be first in the queue at the airport when holidays finally begin. I hope to see you there, at a suitably social distance.

Email your question to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder