Tourists call to travel agencies to ask if their Dubai tours can be cancelled - Russian Tourism Union
MOSCOW. March 20 (Interfax) - The crash of a budget airline plane prompted many phone calls to travel agencies from their clients asking on what conditions their booked tours to Dubai could be cancelled but there has yet been no real cancellation, Russian Tourism Union (RTU) spokeswoman Irina Tyurina told Interfax on Sunday.
"Agencies have received many calls with questions on what conditions tours can be cancelled. But formal cancellation is physically impossible on a weekend because offices are closed," she said, adding that the real picture of tour cancellations will not be clear until Monday, the first working day after the Rostov air crash.
"There also calls from tourists who are afraid of flying anywhere in principle and have asked for airplane to be replaced with ground transport. Many want to refuse from flying precisely on Flydubai," Tyurina said.
Formally, tour operators are under no obligation to refund if someone is afraid of flying after an air crash, she said.
"Natalie Tours and Art Tour companies, which had their tourists on the Flydubai flight to Rostov-on-Don, have already said that they will resolve issues in clients' favor. It is difficult to say how other companies will behave. If a tour operator had no people on that flight, and it has nothing to do with this crash, then of course it is unclear when it should return the money," the RTU spokeswoman said.
The best option is to offer to postpone the trip or choose a different destination, she said.
A Flydubai Boeing 737-800, Flight FZ981 from Dubai, crashed at the Rostov-on-Don airport while performing a go-around on Saturday morning. All 62 people on board, including 55 passengers and seven crewmembers, were killed. Twenty-nine of them were Natalie Tours clients and three Art Tour's. The rest had probably booked their trips on their own.