European Parliament votes on air passenger rights

European Parliament voted (05-Feb-2014) on proposals from the European Commission designed to strength air passenger rights. The Parliament gave its backing to key Commission proposals to strengthen passenger rights, including:

• Enforcement: Parliament supported the Commission's proposal to strengthen oversight of air carriers by national and European authorities as well as more effective sanctions;
• Right to care: Parliament supported the Commission's proposal to introduce a right to care for passengers after a delay of two hours, for all flights irrespective of distance;
• Complaint handling: Parliament backed the Commission's proposal to ensure that passengers have a right to a response to their complaint within two months and an acknowledgement of a complaint within a week. Parliament also proposed that the Commission define a common complaint form;
• Right to information: Parliament backed the Commission's proposal to ensure passengers have a right to information about their situation, 30 minutes after a scheduled departure. Currently there is no time limit. Parliament also proposes to have contact points in the airports to inform passengers on the circumstances of their travel disruption and on what are the rights they are entitled to.
• Re-routing: Parliament backed the Commission's proposal to improve the rights of consumers by ensuring that passengers have a right to be re-routed by another air carrier or transport mode in case of cancellation when the carrier cannot re-route on its own services. The Commission proposes that this right applies after 12 hours, the Parliament suggests a much lower limit of eight hours;
• Misspelling: Parliament backed the Commission's proposals to provide a right for a passenger to correct a spelling mistake in a name free of charge;
• Connecting flights: Parliament backed the Commission's proposal to clarify that rights to assistance and compensation apply if a connecting flight is missed because the previous flight was late - however, the Parliament specified that the compensation applies only where there is a delay of at least 90 minutes for the first flight;
• Luggage: Parliament backed the Commission's proposal to give national authorities enforcement powers over lost luggage rules.

Parliament's proposals differed from the Commission's in three main areas:

• Compensation for delays (short and medium flights): Parliament proposed to fix the threshold for compensation for delays at three hours, rather than five hours as proposed by the Commission;
• Extraordinary circumstances: Parliament backed the Commission's proposal to clearly define extraordinary circumstances, which are outside the airline's control, so the carrier is not required to pay compensation. On the issue of technical faults, however, whereas the Commission proposal allows for a limited number of technical faults to be exempt - for example technical faults discovered while in the air - if maintenance has been carried out correctly, Parliament proposed that technical faults can almost never be exempt. In addition, Parliament proposed an exhaustive list for exceptional circumstances, while the Commission argues that experience shows events like a volcano eruption can happen which no one expected, so the proposed list should be "open";
• The current air passenger regulation, sets no limit to liability - even in extraordinary circumstances like a volcano or major crisis, where in some cases state authorities would mobilise to assist stranded citizens. The Commission proposes to introduce a limit of three nights, in circumstances such as snow, storms and strikes. The Parliament proposes to raise the limit to 5 nights.
• The Parliament proposed to impose on airlines an obligation to take insurance in case of bankruptcy (insolvency). The aim is to ensure that passengers would be reimbursed the cost of their tickets and stranded passengers would be repatriated.

European Commission VP responsible for transport Siim Kallas said: "It's so important that passenger rights do not just exist on paper. We all need to be able to rely on them when it matters most - when things go wrong. We know that the real priority for stranded passengers is just to get home. So our focus is on information, care and effective re-routing. The aim is to get passengers where they want to be as quickly as possible while giving the airlines the time they need to sort problems out." [more - original PR] [more - original PR - II]