Wizz Air to refund passengers £1.24m after regulator’s enforcement action
Wizz Air has been forced to pay out £1.24m in refunds to passengers and tweak policies on how it handles flight disruption, after enforcement action from the UK’s aviation regulator.
The low-cost carrier has had to review thousands of customer’s compensation claims in July, after the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) received a huge number of complaints that many had been falsely refused.
Some 25,000 claims were re-examined as part of the investigation, with extra payouts given in 6,000 cases. The claims included disputes over fees for replacement flights, transfers when disrupted flights were re-routed to different airports and hotel costs.
The CAA said today Wizz had made sufficient changes to its policies to ensure that it consistently complied with legal obligations to its customers.
Paul Smith, consumer director at the UK Civil Aviation Authority, said:“This is good news for passengers and our concerns have been validated by the outcome of our actions.“
“Passengers have every right to expect their claims to be resolved quickly, efficiently and in line with the regulations. These outcomes will now provide Wizz Air’s passengers with a better experience.”
In a statement on the London Stock Exchange, the airline said it had invested £90m to improve its operations last year, resulting in a flight completion rate of over 99 per cent.
The additional spend covered things like adding spare aircraft capacity, increasing staffing at airports and claim centres, and using new AI-based tools to forecast disruption.
Wizz Air UK managing director, Marion Geoffroy, said: “We are pleased the CAA has recognised the significant steps Wizz Air has taken to improve performance for our customers.
“Like all airlines in Europe, we faced unprecedented operating challenges in the summer of 2022 but the improvements we put in place have led to a better customer experience and our performance in 2023 was among the strongest in the industry.”
She added: “We are seeing a significant uptick in our customer satisfaction scores and we remain fully committed to continuing to improve our operations in 2024 and beyond.”
Wizz Air came under scrutiny last year over its handling of customer refunds and complaints, even before the watchdog took action.
A Sunday Times investigation in May found the budget carrier had failed to pay up nearly £5m in unpaid refunds for compensation claims, with 881 county court judgements left outstanding.