SAS is fined NOK 100,000 for being too slow with refunds after a pilot strike

The aviation directorate says the company has spent too long paying back money paid for flights that were cancelled during the pilot strike this summer.

The two-week strike this summer has cost SAS dearly. In the quarterly figures presented in August, it was stated that the company owed people NOK 10 million, just for cancelled flights. Nearly 400,000 SAS passengers were affected.

In addition, there are large sums of money for everything people have spent while they themselves have had to arrange new plane tickets with other companies, rent cars, take trains and buses, and other things to get to or from holiday.

At the beginning of August, SAS received notice from the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority that passengers had to get their money back quickly after all cancellations. The Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority ordered SAS in September to refund all customers for cancelled flights within seven days, from 15 September.

SAS reported that they were up to date on this date. That turned out not to be true. After the deadline, the Norwegian Aviation Authority assessed whether they should impose a compulsory fine on the company. And now they have concluded.

“We call it a compulsory fine, but feel free to call it a fine. They will be fined NOK 100,000, they received a letter about that on Monday,” says Lars Kobberstad to NRK.

SAS has been given ten days to correct what they are fined for, namely not refunding tickets quickly enough. They can then get a new one in ten days, says Kobberstad.

“The first fine was NOK 100,000. It can be higher if we receive information or insufficient information that things are not going as they should. But we make a new assessment after ten days have passed.”

SAS Norway’s press manager, Tonje Sund, confirms that SAS has received the decision and that it is now being reviewed. Sund says SAS and the supervisory authority do not agree on how to look at the complex cases and the application of the seven-day deadline. SAS believes that in September it was up to date with ticket refunds and within the seven-day deadline for these.

Sund says it is the more complex compensation cases that remained, which do not have the same deadline. These are cases with “outlays for hotels, food, alternative transport, and so on“. The press manager says SAS lacks information in certain cases.

“Overall, we aim to be finished by the end of December at the latest. The cases that remain are complex and must be dealt with individually,” he writes.

Source: NRK