Wizz Air has been criticised for attracting a high number of complaints and not paying customers refunds by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
The aviation body said that the Hungarian airline was "ranked as clearly the worst airline for complaints escalated to either Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) schemes or the regulator’s in-house complaints team in the third quarter of 2022".
ADR is when a complaint is settled out of court with the assistance of an impartial body, with Wizz Air attracting 811 complaints per million passengers from July to September.
The regulator also questioned why Wizz Air took so long to process claims received directly from passengers, and the large number of County Court Judgements which have been found against Wizz Air and remain unpaid.
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The CAA says it has "made it clear to Wizz Air that its behaviour is unacceptable", adding that "it is imperative for the issues to be tackled urgently."
The body said the airline had "acknowledged and expressed regret over these problems and has committed to the Civil Aviation Authority that it will clear the backlogs of claims and outstanding ADR payments by Christmas".
Anna Bowles, head of consumer policy and enforcement at the CAA, said: "Passengers have every right to expect their complaints and claims to be resolved quickly and efficiently and to be treated fairly by airlines.
"The volume of complaints and claims received by ADR in respect of Wizz Air is far higher than those seen for other airlines. This, alongside the delays in processing and paying claims and the large number of County Court Judgements made against Wizz Air, has raised significant concerns for the CAA.
“We have made it clear to Wizz Air that its behaviour is unacceptable and that we expect overdue complaints and claims to be resolved in advance of Christmas.
"We understand the payment of County Court Judgements may continue into January, but we are encouraging Wizz Air to ensure that the payment of these is also prioritised. We will continue to monitor the situation.
"Where we have evidence that an airline is letting passengers down, we won’t hesitate to take further action where required.”
With the exception of Royal Brunei Airlines which has 555 complaints per million passengers, other airlines had less than half as many complaints as Wizz Air, and many significantly less.
A Wizz Air spokesperson said: “We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience we have caused our customers and we are working hard to put things right and resolve all outstanding claims as quickly as possible.
“The major disruption we navigated last summer meant that we have been dealing with an unprecedented number of claims.
"Despite this, 91% of claims have already been processed. We have recently doubled the size of our customer services team and are working continuously to process all outstanding customer claims, Alternative Dispute Resolution claims and settle all County Court Judgements.
"Customers seeking to settle outstanding County Court Judgements can do so through the chatbot on the Wizz Air website, by selecting the relevant option from the Help & Support menu. Once the required steps have been completed, a customer service agent will be in touch directly to arrange payment.
“We would ask all customers pursuing a claim to check their spam folders for messages from the company, as this has held up settlement being made in a number of cases.
“We are committed to resolving all outstanding claims and resuming our regular processing times as soon as possible.”
