Refunds after a cancellation are a real, recurring pain
Before designing anything, I checked whether this was a real problem or just my own frustration. I read recent reviews and looked at public data, regulation and court records.
or cancellations
What the 40 most recent reviews say
I went through the 40 latest MakeMyTrip reviews on ConsumerAffairs, from January to August 2026, and tagged each by its main complaint.
This site skews heavily negative, so these numbers show what goes wrong, not how often it goes wrong overall.
refund grievances handled by the National Consumer Helpline in April–December 2025. Travel and tourism accounted for 4,050 of them.
Dept. of Consumer Affairs, via Storyboard18During IndiGo’s mass cancellations, the government told airlines to refund automatically, without passengers having to ask.
News on AIRin service fees that passengers who booked through third-party platforms reported paying on refunds, even though the airline had cancelled.
Patna Press, Dec 2025A Hyderabad consumer commission held MakeMyTrip liable after a cancelled-flight refund was moved to its wallet without clear consent.
LiveLaw, 2023When an airline cancels, MakeMyTrip travellers can’t see where their money is or trust the number shown, and getting help usually means leaving the app.
Three parties hold the money. The app shows one status.
A refund passes from the airline to MakeMyTrip to the traveller’s bank, and each step has its own timing. Today the traveller sees “Refund initiated” the whole way, so a normal wait and a stuck refund look exactly the same.
How a traveller’s confidence drops
One common case: IndiGo cancels a Delhi to Bengaluru flight six days before departure. Hover a step to find it on the line.
1. Notified
Gets an SMS from the airline. The app still says “Confirmed”.
2. Acts
Taps Cancel, the only option. Sees one figure with no breakdown.
3. Waits
Checks daily. The status stays “Refund initiated” for days.
4. Asks for help
The bot can’t find the case. Help ends on a phone number.
5. Escalates
Leaves a one-star review or disputes the charge with the bank.
6E 2134 · Sun, 18 Oct
Need help?
Call our customer care numberUse a code on your next stay
- 1“Up to 7 working days”, counted from when?
- 2Help ends on a phone number
- 3A promotion sits next to an open problem
6E 2134 · Sun, 18 Oct
- IndiGo approvedTue 13 Oct
- MakeMyTrip processingUsually 1–2 working days
- HDFC credits ••4421By Mon 26 Oct
Help with this booking
Case MMT-88213 attached- 1A real date, and who is acting now
- 2Help opens with the case attached
- 3No promotion while the case is open
Three flows, each fixing one break in the journey
The biggest shift came early. When the airline cancels, the traveller isn’t really cancelling anything. They are choosing what happens next, so the first screen should be a choice, not a Cancel button.
Choose a refund or a free rebook
Under DGCA rules, a passenger whose flight the airline cancels can take a refund or an alternative flight at no extra cost. Today’s app hides the second option behind a generic Cancel.
- Refund and rebook shown side by side, before anything is confirmed.
- Every line of the refund shown, including the ₹0 airline charge and why it is zero.
- The refund goes back to the original card by default. The wallet is optional.
- The button says exactly what will happen: “Get full refund ₹5,460”.
6E 2134 · 1 traveller
Your refund
Refund to
Free flights on the same route
Refund of ₹5,460
MMT-88213- Refund requestedMon 12 Oct, 3:42 pm
- IndiGo approved AirlineUsually 1–3 days
- MakeMyTrip processing MMTUsually 1–2 working days
- HDFC credits card ••4421 BankBanks take 5–7 working days · by Mon 26 Oct
Running late?
If nothing shows by 26 Oct, we’ll raise a query with HDFC and send you the reference. Locked until 26 OctTrack the refund like a parcel
The tracker gives each of the three parties its own stage, so the traveller always knows who has the money and whether the wait is normal.
- Each stage names who is acting and how long that step usually takes.
- One promised date, set from the slow end of each range so it is rarely missed.
- If the date passes, the app raises the bank query itself and shares the reference.
- A notification at every stage, so people stop checking every day.
Get help without starting over
Help opens from the booking, with the case already attached. Every option ends inside the app with a record the traveller can return to.
- Self-serve actions limited to what this booking actually allows.
- Chat starts with the case history loaded and keeps a transcript.
- A callback with a country code instead of “call us”, which matters for people travelling abroad.
Refund in progress · step 3 of 4
What I chose, and what I ruled out
Some of the options I rejected would look better on a short-term dashboard. I chose the ones that make a traveller likely to book again.
| Decision | Chose | Ruled out | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| First action | Refund or free rebook | Generic Cancel button | “Cancel” hides an option the passenger is entitled to and suggests a fee is coming. |
| Fees | Convenience fee refunded when the airline cancels | Keep the fee | Passengers were publicly complaining about paying for a cancellation they didn’t cause, and five of the 40 reviews describe getting less than the airline refunded. |
| Refund destination | Original card by default | Wallet pre-selected | A consumer commission has already ruled against moving a refund to the wallet without clear consent. |
| Timing | One conservative date | “Up to 7 working days” | Nobody knows when a duration started counting. A date can be checked. |
| Escalation | Visible, unlocks on the date | Always available | Always-on invites escalations before anything is late. Visible-but-locked tells people exactly when it opens. |
Working inside Cosmos, and adding one component
MakeMyTrip and Goibibo share an internal design system called Cosmos. It isn’t public, so I read the computed styles on makemytrip.com and built every screen from those values and from patterns already in the app: cards, chips, bottom sheets, radio lists and the gradient button.
New component: status tracker
Hotel refunds, bus cancellations, train waitlists and visa applications have the same waiting problem, so I specified the tracker as a reusable component instead of a one-off screen.
- Parts: outcome and case ID, ordered stages, an owner tag per stage, a promised date, an escalation slot.
- Variants: compact inside a booking card, and full screen.
- Rule: dates are always real calendar dates, never durations.
What engineering would need to send
I wrote down the data the tracker depends on, so the design never shows a state the backend can’t report.
stages[].owner | airline · mmt · bank |
stages[].state | done · now · upcoming |
stages[].typical_duration | “1–2 working days” |
promise_date | 2026-10-26 |
escalation.unlock_at | same as promise_date |
An accessibility problem I found in the live palette
These colours are used for text on makemytrip.com today. Measured against WCAG AA (4.5:1 for normal text), they fall short, so I kept them for icons and fills and used darker versions for small text.
| Text on background | Contrast | Fix I used |
|---|---|---|
| AaPrimary blue #008CFF on white | 3.39:1 Fail | #065AF3 for small links and labels (5.58:1) |
| AaWhite on the light end of the button gradient | 2.29:1 Fail | Darker gradient for buttons with text, #0D6FF0 to #0547C9 (4.62:1 and up) |
| AaLight grey #9B9B9B on white | 2.78:1 Fail | #6B6B6B for secondary text (5.33:1) |
How I would know if it worked
Refund speed is set mostly by airlines and banks, so it isn’t a fair measure of this design. What the design can change is how often people need to ask.
| Metric | Why it matters | Goal |
|---|---|---|
| Support contacts per cancelled booking | The clearest sign the tracker answers the question on its own | Down |
| Bank disputes on refunds | The most expensive way a refund can go wrong | Down |
| Repeat booking within 90 days of a refund | Whether the traveller trusted MakeMyTrip enough to come back | Up |
| Abandoned remedy sheets (guardrail) | Makes sure the full breakdown doesn’t put people off | Stable |
To test it, I’d release the new flow to a share of airline-cancelled domestic bookings, keep a control group, and run it for at least four weeks so bank stages have time to finish.
What I learned, and what’s still missing
I got the rules wrong first
My first draft showed an airline cancellation fee on a flight the airline had cancelled. Checking the DGCA rules fixed the number, and also turned a Cancel button into a choice between a refund and a free rebook. It became the most important decision in the project.
It connects to my day job
At Surf I designed a recovery flow for missed payroll dates that suggests the nearest valid date in one step. The remedy sheet uses the same idea: when something goes wrong, offer the right next action instead of a dead end.
What I’d do next
This is a concept and hasn’t been tested with travellers. Next, I would interview five or six people who recently had a flight cancelled, test the remedy sheet with them, and check my stage timings against real data.
Sources and references7 links
- MakeMyTrip reviews on ConsumerAffairs, 40 most recent as of Oct 2026, tagged by me.
- National Consumer Helpline refund data, Apr–Dec 2025, via Storyboard18.
- Government directives during IndiGo disruptions, Dec 2025: Storyboard18, News on AIR.
- Third-party platform fees on airline-cancelled refunds, Patna Press, Dec 2025.
- Hyderabad District Consumer Commission ruling on a wallet refund, LiveLaw, Nov 2023.
- On the Cosmos design system: The Hard Copy. Colours and type read from makemytrip.com, Oct 2026.
- Passenger options when an airline cancels: summary of DGCA rules.
An independent concept, not affiliated with or endorsed by MakeMyTrip. Brand names belong to their owners. The flight, bank, case ID and amounts are illustrative.
Thanks for reading
Happy to walk through the decisions in more detail.