UK aviation regulator fails to meet its own 60-day repayment target for those hit by collapse

Tens of thousands of Thomas Cook customers waiting for refunds for holidays booked with the travel company have not been repaid on time after the body making the payments missed a self-imposed deadline.

The world’s oldest tour operator collapsed earlier this year after failing to secure emergency funding from banks, leaving about 150,000 British holidaymakers stranded abroad.

The Civil Aviation Authority said it had not met its own 60-day repayment target for about one-third of claimants. The aviation regulator has so far refunded about 60% of the valid claims it received at the start of the online refund process, totalling £160m.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest About 150,000 British holidaymakers had to be repatriated under Operation Matterhorn after the collapse. Photograph: Ümit Bektaş/Reuters

“We are making good progress and we are sorry for those people that we’ve not yet been able to pay,” said Paul Smith, a director at the CAA, adding that refunds for more than 50,000 customers were outstanding.

“There’s still quite a lot to pay and particularly at this time of year we want to get the money back to people as quickly as possible. We want to make sure it is the right money to the right people …It is a very big challenge,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Many Thomas Cook customers have complained on social media about their missing refunds and a perceived lack of communication from the CAA.

The refund programme concerns approximately 300,000 cancelled holiday bookings for customers covered by Atol financial insurance, and the CAA said about 215,000 of the claims received so far were valid. It believes the remaining 85,000 are either duplicate or invalid claims.

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The regulator blames the delays to the UK travel industry’s largest repayment programme on the complexity of the booking data it received from Thomas Cook Group, as well as problems with incomplete claims forms and a significant number of fraudulent claims. The CAA has contacted some claimants to request more information about their bookings.

Thomas Cook collapsed in the early hours of 23 September, forcing the government to launch Operation Matterhorn, the UK’s largest peacetime repatriation – a two-week programme that cost £100m.

The CAA launched its online refund claims form on 7 October, stating it aimed to pay refunds within 60 days of receiving a valid completed claim form. The claims system will remain open until September 2020, and the CAA is encouraging customers who have yet to submit their claims to do so as quickly as possible.