I suspect that by the end of August, once the cash flow has returned to a degree of steadiness, everyone will have been refunded.
It isn't right, but equally it's easy to see why travel companies might do this, or freely offer vouchers over the booking value. Put another way, if had to refund 100,000 customers a day for four months. From your savings. What would YOU do?
I'm in full agreement with you DG.
If the flights for next year were the same, or similar price to what we paid for this year, then I'd have happily taken the vouchers/rebooked for next year. Unfortunately, the airlines have hiked prices by no-small amount. It may be that they
need to in order to survive, but if immediate cashflow is their main concern (which I believe it should be) then making future flights competetive to what the customer has already paid would have been a much better gameplan. I'm only waiting on a few hundred quid, so it's no big deal, but if it were thousands, I'd be a little more disgruntled.
I hasten to add, I only ever use low-cost carriers, and the above is true for easyJet, TUI, Jet2 and WizzAir. I haven't flown Ryanair for at least a decade, and wouldn't put money in their coffers if my life depended on it. I can't comment on Norweigan, as haven't booked with them this year, or next.