"My guess is that it's easy to get cash refunds if you show up at the airport and cancel your ticket there...

(They should NEVER allow cash refunds on tickets bought with a card)"

When I worked in retail, Rule No1 was that you never refunded to anything other than the originating payment type/account - simple as.

I expect there would be exceptional circumstances - but they would be the sort of circumstances that would require several phone calls to head office, the payment type issuer, and seeing evidence of, say, a closed credit account, before even considering refunding a credit card, for example, as cash.

I don't recall ever seeing it happen myself anyway, although I could be wrong, of course. I'm sure it is possible.

Steven R