Passengers of BA-owner IAG and rival EasyJet have yet to reclaim some €724m (£643m) in travel vouchers going back to the beginning of the pandemic.
IAG, which owns five airlines including Air Lingus and Iberia, said it had about €600m (£533m) in vouchers issued when flights were cancelled.
EasyJet’s most recent results suggested it had £110m in unclaimed vouchers.
The practice of issuing vouchers attracted criticism because many people wanted a cash refund instead.
Aviation consultant and former IAG employee Robert Boyle, who flagged the IAG figures, said that when airlines were forced to cancel a huge number of flights during the pandemic they encouraged customers to accept vouchers for future travel rather than issue refunds.
Given so many vouchers have yet to be redeemed Mr Boyle questioned how many of the vouchers will ever be used.
The rate of voucher use might increase as the expiry date approaches he said: “But if even 20% of the original €1.4bn [£1.24bn] of vouchers expire unused, that would be a €280m [£248m] release to profit”.
“However, if the vouchers are never used, IAG will have extra seats available to sell. Given what has happened to ticket prices since the pandemic, the cash value of those seats will be even bigger than the reported voucher values.”
Both BA and EasyJet have extended the expiry date of their vouchers several times.
In its most recent set of results EasyJet said no vouchers had expired yet as expiry dates had been extended “to ensure customers have the maximum opportunity to utilise their vouchers”.
The airline said the number of unused vouchers at the end of its last financial year on 30 September equated to £110m , or 2% of its ticket revenue in 2019, so there was a “very small proportion of customers who have not yet used their vouchers”.
“And it is also worth noting that the number will have reduced since then as five months have passed – including a busy booking period at the turn of year.
BA’s will now run out in September 2023, though the airline said it was “always reviewing that”.
It said last year 700,000 vouchers were used and it was sending reminders to customers holding outstanding ones.
Airlines, including BA, faced accusations during the pandemic of making it difficult for people to claim a refund.
BA said when a flight was cancelled it always offered the option to get a full refund, rebook or reroute. It never automatically issued vouchers, which had to be requested by a passenger.
But it said it recognised that during the height of the pandemic it could not offer “all the usual channels for customers to request a refund”.
As a result, it added, if a customer had been due to travel on a flight cancelled by the airline between 9 March 2020 and 19 November 2020 and they opted for a voucher, BA had already contacted them to offer a full refund.
