Emirates expects to clear refund backlog 'within two months'

The Gulf carrier is currently processing up to 200,000 refund requests a month, and has cleared nearly 650,000 requests in the past two months.

It comes after Emirates vowed in April to expedite its Covid refund processes; it has so far repaid customers more than £400 million (AED 1.9 billion).

"This pandemic is a black swan event no-one expected, impacting travellers and hitting the airline and travel industry hard," said Adnan Kazim, Emirates chief commercial officer.

"We are committed to doing what’s right by our customers. That’s why we ring-fenced cash to honour refunds, and invested resources to expedite processing.

"Our average processing time for refunds has reduced from 90 days to 60, and as we see lower volumes of new requests, we expect this rate to further improve."