I am a retired expat living in Thailand. In early 2020, I booked return flights back to London to visit my elderly parents.

I was set to depart from Bangkok to Gatwick via Dubai on an Emirates flight on 9 April, and return on 23 April via the same route. The tickets cost £1,081.46.

As the coronavirus lockdown started on 23 March, these flights never took off and my trip was cancelled. However, I never received my money back from the airline. Is it too late? M.B, Thailand 

Helen Crane, This is Money's consumer champion, replies: Every time a reader contacts me to say they are still awaiting a refund for a covid-cancelled flight or holiday, I think it must surely be the last time - but every time, I am proved wrong. 

The last time I wrote about this was in February, when a reader told me travel agent Alpha Rooms had not paid him back a £5,000 deposit he put down in 2020, on a holiday to Tenerife with 23 friends. 

Before that, there was the lady who put down £4,664 for an ill-fated trip to Orlando with Teletext Holidays. 

In both of those cases, though, the travel agent had gone under since the pandemic - making it harder to track down the money. 

In contrast Emirates, the airline you booked with, is still very much a going concern and indeed one of the world's largest carriers. 

So why was it so difficult to get you your £1,081?

You told me that, soon after lockdown began, you completed Emirates' online refund claim form not once, but twice after you did not hear anything back in the first instance. 

The second time you sent the form, you received a 'receipt of refund request' email,  but the ticket refund never arrived. 

Emirates operated a policy during the pandemic of offering customers full refunds if their flight was called off, or they chose not to travel, between 28 February and 31 May 2020, so you were certain you were in line for the money. 

However, this eventually drifted to the back of your mind. 

When you contacted me you said: 'I would be so grateful if you could assist, or just to tell me that any possibility of a refund has since expired so I can mentally put this loss to bed.' 

You used your credit card to pay, so ordinarily I would suggest exploring using the Section 75 protection to get your money back from your card provider, if getting it from Emirates proved difficult. 

However, this expires six years from the date the purchase was made, and unbelievably that time has now passed. 

You said you had even tried to use flight refund claim websites, which take up customers' claims for refunds and compensation with airlines on their behalf. 

I'd sound a note of caution for anyone considering these, as they usually charge the customer 35 per cent of any money they secure. 

After doing some digging, I discovered that - like other airlines - Emirates took some time to put a new refund policy in place at the beginning of the pandemic. 

Your refund request was put in before this happened, under Emirates' pre-pandemic refund policy. 

As the airline hadn't yet instigated its covid policy where everyone with a flight set to take off between 28 February and 31 May would get a refund, it was rejected. 

Emirates later asked all customers who had already put in a refund request to contact Emirates customer service and ask to resubmit it under the new system. 

You missed this announcement, and therefore your request became lost in the system. 

I can't blame you for this, as in your mind, you'd already requested a refund - twice - and it was now over to the airline. How were you to know you filled in an outdated version of the form?

Since I contacted Emirates, the money has now landed in your bank account after more than six years. 

It doesn't bode well for those putting in claims for flight refunds now, due to disruption caused by the Middle East conflict. 

Will I still be dealing with those in 2032? Only time will tell.