What To Do If An Airline Won’t Refund Your Canceled Flight (2024)

If you’re having trouble getting a refund from the airlines, you’re not alone. Airline operations can be a mess, with delays that lead to missed connections and plenty of outright cancellations. If your trip was canceled due to factors outside your control, you’re likely eligible for a refund—to the original form of payment and not just a voucher for future travel.

Besides inconveniencing travelers, major weather incidents, staffing strikes and air traffic congestion all hurt an airline’s bottom line. That’s why airlines try to hold cash for as long as possible by offering vouchers. Some airlines even offer bonuses or discounts if customers are willing to accept the option of rebooking for a later date instead of demanding a refund.

And sometimes airlines work for their best interests and not yours. They know perfectly well in when a customer is due a refund but may make it difficult to get one. Or worse, they refuse to honor their contractual obligations.

Determine If You’re Really Due a Refund

There’s one basic rule regarding airline cancellation policies: If the airline makes the change, you’re due a refund. If you voluntarily make a change before it actually cancels the flight, you are not. This is true whether or not the airline offers flexible cancellation policies. That’s why it’s almost never in your best interest to cancel before the airline does.

How To Get a Refund

If the airline has canceled your flight and you’re due a refund, the next thing you need to do is make a good-faith effort to contact the airline and request your money back. Phone wait times may be extremely long depending on how much is going wrong with air travel at the moment—but it’s a safe bet something is going wrong somewhere. Many airlines, notably American and Delta, have call-back options that make your wait time virtual instead of having to listen to smooth jazz hold music for hours on end.

Here’s your opportunity to leverage any status you have with an airline. Instead of calling reservations, call your dedicated elite line. It’s not a guarantee you’ll get through more quickly but on average, the elite-line customer service agents are more equipped, or at least more inclined, to help you.

Another strategy if you’re having trouble reaching someone at an airline, particularly a foreign one, is to call their office in another country via a VoIP service such as Google Hangouts or Nextiva. English-speaking Asian countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong might be worth a try if you can’t get through to the U.S. line.

Some savvy travelers bypass the phone altogether and get their refunds via social media. Airline X teams in particular are responsive. Air Canada and Southwest, among others, have processed refunds and changes via X. Air France-KLM has a strong presence on both X and Facebook Messenger. Before you go the X platform route, check the airline’s X feed to verify the airline is active there. Some small foreign airlines don’t have much of a presence.

Most airlines have their direct messages open. The best bet is to try to communicate with the airline via messaging as opposed to just sending a tweet. Include your name, original departure date and flight and record locator. Let them know exactly what you want: a refund to the original form of payment.

What To Do If the Airline Refuses To Refund You

Forbes Advisor has heard multiple stories about airlines encouraging a voucher and outright refusing to refund a ticket even if the airline initiated the cancellation. Here’s where it’s important to know your rights.

If your flight touches the U.S., no matter the airline, the Department of Transportation makes it crystal clear: You are due a refund if the airline cancels a flight or makes a significant schedule change. The verbiage is a bit vague, but generally, flights that are rebooked as connections or changes fall under the provision.

The Department of Transportation became aware of airlines playing fast and loose with the rules and published a clarification on April 3, 2020. Then it published an unusual second clarification notice on May 12, 2020, to remind the airlines that refunds weren’t negotiable, stating:

“The obligation of airlines to provide refunds, including the ticket price and any optional fee charged for services a passenger is unable to use, does not cease when the flight disruptions are outside of the carrier’s control (e.g., a result of government restrictions).”

The clarification includes language that tells airlines the DOT takes these complaints seriously. The policy says that the DOT will “provide carriers with an opportunity to become compliant before taking further action.” In other words, the airlines have time to get everything in order before the DOT takes action.

The second clarification became necessary because some airlines weren’t following the rules. United in particular was guilty of abusing the Significant Schedule Change clause by trying to change the terms from two-plus hours to 25-plus hours retroactively. The DOT made it known in no uncertain terms that while airlines “may develop reasonable interpretations” of a significant schedule change, they may not abuse the DOT’s flexibility. “The Aviation Enforcement Office expects carriers to honor those reasonable interpretations in implementing their refund obligations.”

And if that wasn’t clear enough, the DOT made it even more plain:

“The Department interprets the statutory prohibition against unfair or deceptive practices to cover actions by airlines and ticket agents applying changes retroactively to their refund policies that affect consumers negatively. The refund policy in place at the time the passenger purchased the ticket is the policy that is applicable to that ticket. The Aviation Enforcement Office would consider the denial of refunds in contravention of the policies that were in effect at the time of the ticket purchase to be an unfair and deceptive practice.”

How To File a DOT Complaint

The process of filing a DOT complaint is simple. The online form takes around 15 minutes to complete. On the form, under Description of Problem/Inquiry/Comment, briefly explain that the airline canceled your flight, what you’ve done to try to get a refund and how the airline responded.

By law, airlines are required to acknowledge within 30 days of receiving the complaint and to respond to your complaint within 60 days. In reality, the process can take much less time than that.

Michael Shanahan, an IT specialist based in Barbados, told Forbes Advisor about his process of trying to secure refunds from several canceled flights. He was getting nowhere with both TAP Air Portugal and Qatar Airways. On each airline, he had a paid business-class ticket that was canceled by the airline. Both airlines insisted during numerous contacts that “…all they could do was give vouchers, and it wasn’t a law that they had to refund.” Fortunately, Shanahan knew the airlines were wrong and what to do.

Shanahan filed a complaint with the DOT on each airline. Within seven days he heard back, with the department agreeing that because both flights touched the U.S., they were within the DOT jurisdiction and Shanahan was indeed due a refund. “I filed the DOT complaint and suddenly I heard, ‘We will absolutely refund money. I have already processed your refund.’”

If your flight has any U.S. connection, your best bet is to go with the U.S. Department of Transportation. If your flight is within the European Union, you are likely equally covered by what is known as EU 261 (or Rule 261).

EU 261 provides for refunds for any flights that depart from the EU or arrive in the EU on an airline operated by an EU-based country. On March 18, 2020, the European Union clarified Rule 261 by reiterating that canceled flights are eligible for a refund to the original form of payment. To file an EU 261 complaint, you are directed to email to the country’s governing body for each airline or for the gateway or destination of your flight.

If All Else Fails, Try Your Credit Card Company

Some airlines and flights might fall outside U.S. or EU purview, or there may be a situation where even a nudge from the government fails to produce a result. In that case, your next step is to file a dispute with your credit card company. The simple fact is that the airline failed to provide you with a service for which you paid. That should fall under the DOT regulations and the Fair Credit Billing Act (FCBA). The FCBA says you cannot be charged for a product you didn’t receive or a product you did not agree to buy.

It’s up to the credit provider to determine whether you qualify for a chargeback. You’ll have a much stronger case if you show that you have exhausted every other option before filing a dispute. The bank will contact the airline on your behalf and ask them to provide documentation regarding the transaction. The airline would then have to show that you agreed to accept whatever compensation they offered. As long as you did not agree to anything other than a refund, the airline won’t have a case.

Don’t Give Up

There’s a reason airlines make it hard for you to get a refund: They are in desperate need of the cash. However, with persistence and knowledge, you can prevail. A Boston-based writer, Jennifer Yellin spent over two weeks trying to get TAP Air Portugal to budge off its vouchers-only policy.

Yellin reports that it took less than 36 hours after filing a DOT complaint to get the agency’s attention. “Three days later I received an email from TAP Air that it was processing the refund (and it cc’d the contact from the DOT onto the email) and the credit hit my card six days later. From beginning to end it took about a week and a half. It was an incredibly simple and seamless process and only took a few minutes of work on my end.”

Bottom Line

If your flight was canceled or if the schedule was significantly changed from what you booked, there’s a good chance you’re eligible for a refund. It may take a little effort on your part to request the refund, but it’s worth it: A cash refund is infinitely more flexible than an airline credit or voucher and won’t come with expiration dates or other restrictions. While everyone hopes that travel will go as planned, knowing your rights can help if situations change unexpectedly.