SC for meeting between Airlines and Centre for resolving plea on refund of tickets

The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Centre to hold talks with Airlines and respond to a plea for refund of tickets cancelled due to the lockdown, clamped in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic.

A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M R Shah said credit can be given to the passengers for future travel in a period of two years.

Some Airlines, for their part, contended nowhere in the world airlines were refunding complete fare. Senior advocate Harish Salve, representing SpiceJet, said they were hit by 60 billion dollars globally due to pandemic. 49% of the flying cost was fixed while the revenue was zero in this period, he said.

"We would like to sit with the civil aviation ministry and come up with a solution," he said.

To refund the money to customers, instead of the present practice of creating a credit shell, would ruin the Airlines which have zero revenue at present, he further added.

The court asked the Centre to reply to the PIL filed by NGO Pravasi Legal Cell in three weeks.

The NGO said the Ministry of Civil Aviation's order issued on April 16 directing the airlines to refund only those tickets that were booked during the lockdown period and left out the vast majority of passengers who had booked tickets before the flights were banned, was like treating the equals unequally in violation of fundamental rights of citizens.