Delta is set to pay millions to settle a lawsuit for refusing refunds during COVID

Delta Air Lines will pay around $27 million to settle a lawsuit. The lawsuit was from customers who were upset because Delta didn’t give them their money back for flights they cancelled at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Delta will also pay extra money, 7% on top of the refund, as interest. They’ll also cover the lawyers’ fees, which will be about $2.3 million.

Delta says they didn’t do anything wrong, but they are settling to end the lawsuit. They mentioned that they have already given back $6 billion to customers for over 11 million cancelled tickets since 2020. 

More than 14,000 customers asked for money back, but that’s only 19% of the people who could have. To qualify, you had to be a US citizen, have a credit for a ticket you couldn’t use, and that credit must have been from a flight Delta cancelled between March 1, 2020, and April 30, 2021.

The lawsuit said Delta was not being fair by not giving refunds and instead giving vouchers for future travel.

In 2020, when COVID-19 started, airlines had a hard time, and many flights got cancelled or changed. The Department of Transportation said that by April 2022, airlines had given back more than $600 million to passengers for these issues. In August 2022, almost 1 in 5 complaints about airlines were about refunds.