Cebu Pacific  on Thursday said it expects to settle all the pending refunds in the next six months. 

“Since the start of this pandemic, we have received an unprecedented number of refund requests due to the flight cancellations brought about by the lockdown. Our refund process then was originally not designed to handle this volume of requests, and this resulted in a backlog,” the Gokongwei-led airline said. 

“We have since then revamped our procedures in order to address this,” it added. 

To date, Cebu Pacific refunded over P2.4 billion booking cancellations related to COVID-19, equivalent to 50 percent of refund requests received.

 “We remain committed to our customers to complete pending refunds, and will update them once these have been processed. We are currently halfway through refund requests filed last April,” Cebu Pacific said. 

  “We understand how challenging this whole situation is, and we sincerely apologize for the delay. At present, refunds may take up to six months to process from the time the request was filed. We thank our guests for their patience and understanding as we continue to enhance our processes for this to be resolved soonest,” it added. 

Cebu Pacific said the tourism and aviation industries have been among the worst hit by COVID-19 and currently, Cebu Pacific is only able to operate 10 percent of its pre-COVID network. 

The budget airline earlier posted a net loss of  P9.14 billion in the first half of the year,  a reversal of the P7.14-billion net income in the same period last year, as revenues tumbled 61.2 percent to P17.33 billion from P44.703 billion a year ago. 

Passenger revenues dropped 65.5 percent to P11.50 billion from P33.352 billion it earned in six months ending June 30, 2019. 

The group also saw a 60.1-percent decline in passenger traffic from 11.2 million to 4.5 million as the number of flights decreased by 55.6 percent and seat load factor declined by 7.3 percentage points from 87.2 percent to 80.8 percent.