After the operator collapsed on 23 September, the CAA has received some 215,000 valid refunds claims and paid £160 million to customers who lost out in the company’s failure. 

Paul Smith, CAA’s director of consumers and markets group, was interviewed on BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme on 10 December.

“There’s still quite a lot to pay, and as I say we are sorry we haven’t and particularly at this time of year we want to get the money back to people as quickly as possible, but there are some complexities to some of the bookings,” said Smith. “We want to get the right money to the right people.” 

He confirmed there are more than 50,000 bookings still to repay, insisting they have been working “tirelessly” on the applications.

This refund programme has been the UK travel industry’s largest ever of its kind. 

In order to process the remaining claims from day one of the applications on 7 October, the CAA says it needs more information. It has also encouraged everyone who applied for a refund to check their email junk folders.