LONDON: Hungarian budget carrier Wizz Air has met its commitments to Britain’s aviation regulator to improve its customer service, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said on Wednesday, after the carrier faced consumer complaints.

In the first year of travel recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic, travellers faced record cancellations as airlines struggled to ramp up capacity and staffing after a global shutdown in air travel.

Wizz Air, among other airlines, developed a backlog in refunding and rebooking customers.

“Like all airlines in Europe, we faced unprecedented operating challenges in the summer of 2022 but the improvements we put in place have led to a better customer experience and our performance in 2023 was among the strongest in the industry,” said Marion Geoffroy, Wizz Air’s United Kingdom director.

In July, the CAA ordered Wizz Air to change its processes after it received high volumes of complaints about not issuing passenger refunds for cancelled flights.

Wizz signed undertakings to formalise the changes, which include reconsidering claims from the last 15 months from July which had previously been rejected.

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The regulator said Wizz Air had invested 90 million pounds ($114 million) in improving its customer performance, while also beefing up customer service staff and automated processes.

It had also paid all of its county court judgments brought by customers in Britain.