Airline bankruptcies: MEPs call for better passenger compensation
25-Nov-2009 Passengers who have booked flights with airlines that go bankrupt should be guaranteed compensation and assistance, MEPs told the European Commission today.
In a resolution adopted by a show of hands, Parliament asks the Commission to consider proposing new legislation to ensure passengers are not left stranded without accommodation or a flight home. MEPs suggest that establishing a "reserve compensation fund" and introducing "mutual responsibility" for passengers of all airlines flying in the same direction with available seats, could help to get stranded passengers home.
"Many of these passengers do not have the financial means to deal with this sort of upheaval. They are from those families who spend their savings on a family holiday, only to see their hard-earned money go down the drain through little fault of their own", Transport Committee chair Brian SIMPSON (S&D, UK), told the Commission in a plenary debate last month.
Existing EU legislation deals with ticket price transparency (Regulation 1008/2008), and compensation for passengers denied permission to board (Regulation 261/2004), but MEPs believe there is still a loophole that needs to be closed in cases where an airline is declared bankrupt after customers have bought their tickets online.
A total of 77 airlines have filed for bankruptcy in the European Union since 2000. The latest to do so, in summer 2009, was Sky Europe, many of whose customers were left without compensation for tickets purchased.