Why is my flight refund taking so long?
Booking platforms often receive your refunded money from the airline but do nothing with it until you contact their support. You must manually reach out before they will actually arrange to process your payment. In other cases, the airline itself may delay your claim for weeks without providing any timeline.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Contacting the booking platform's customer support directly to force them to process the refundDid this help you?
- 2Call the airline customer service repeatedly for updates.Did this help you?
- 3File a complaint with an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) body or relevant government regulatory authority (e.g., EC261/UK261 dispute bodies).Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I had two flight refunds that the airline had already sent to [Booking.com](http://Booking.com) weeks ago. Nothing happened until I contacted their support.”source ↗
“They confirmed they’d received the money and only then arranged to process my refunds.”source ↗
“I submitted the claim on September 10th and it is now November 1 and I have no refund… Every time I call Aegean Airlines I’m told they are still working on it and am given no timeline.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 3Airline rejected flight delay compensation for extraordinary circumstances
- 10How to get a refund from a third-party booking site for a canceled hotel
- 25What to do when flights are canceled at the airport
- 2Custom order took so long I missed the refund window
- 5Hotel says they don't have my third-party booking
- 16Why hasn't my online order shipped yet?