Czechs have demanded refunds for plane tickets worth billions of crowns from the travel agencies where they bought them, but few are getting any satisfaction. Travel agencies claim it’s the airlines who aren’t returning them the money that’s causing the problem. The Brno-based online agency Kiwi.com told the daily E15 it had been selling tens of thousands of tickets per day at the peak and that it was supposed to return billions of crowns to its customers. “So far it’s only been possible to return a very small portion of the amount,” said its co-owner Oliver Dlouhý, adding that hundreds of thousands of clients were waiting for their money. “Even so, we’ve returned millions of euro more than the airlines have returned to us.” He warned that it could take months for customers to get refunds, if they ever get them. “If the airlines go bankrupt then [the customers’] money will disappear with them.” The paper also spoke with the head of plane ticket sales at Student Agency Věra Janičinová. “Cancellations are piling up,” she said. “My guess is that their total level is more than CZK 100m. For March and April customers had around CZK 20m.”
