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Blue Air is preparing to exit the market and is dragging out the minutes regarding the fine applied by the National Authority for Consumer Protection (ANPC) regarding the obligation of giving consumers their money back, said the ANPC chairman, Horia Constantinescu, during a press conference on Monday.
He said that unfortunately, there is not much chance for people to get their money back, as the company hasn't even paid its own employees.
"I received e-mails from Blue Air employees in which they told us that they have not received their money in three months and tell us 'how are they going to pay the clients if they don't even pay us,'" the ANPC chairman said, Agerpres.ro informs.
He specified that the Minute was already discussed with a company representative, at ANPC headquarters.
"Between writing the Minute and establishing the sanction I had a meeting with a Blue Air representative, Mr Nastase, along with ANPC commissioners that prepared control documents. He brought us up to the blackboard and told us that it would be wrong for Blue Air to be sanctioned because the financial situation is debatable. We talked about the situation in our office, including what happened with the consumers' money. There were 73,000 harmed consumers, vulnerable consumers, the money of whom was not reimbursed, even the electronic wallet wasn't working. He admitted that this is the number of consumers who were harmed," said Constantinescu.
He added that he even proposed an option through which the sums could be turned into Blue Air shares, which was not accepted by the company's representative.
"We are still being flooded with complaints from people who are at the gateway, with children, with luggage. Keep in mind that only 5% of those affected are complaining, the rest does not. They (the company, ed. n.) received state aid worth 67 million euros during the pandemic, it is not our concern what they did with the money, there are state institutions that can verify this," Constantinescu added.
Last week, ANPC announced that it fined Blue Air 2 million euros for cancelling over 11,000 flights during the period of April 30, 2021 - April 30, 2022, and compels the company to return the money to the customers in 10 days for all canceled flights.
"Following complains submitted by consumers and as a result of reactions from the media, ANPC established control actions during June 2022, to Blue Air Aviation SA economic operator. More exactly, during the period of 30.04.2021 - 30.04.2022, the company has canceled 11,289 flights, corresponding to 178,405 reservations, for which payments of 66,585,967,68 RON were made by consumers from 20 member states of the European Union, in which the air company regularly operates flights," ANPC specifies.
