Clarifying and fine-tuning passenger rights Sylviane Lust - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

“Clarifying and fine-tuning passenger rights”

Sylviane Lust Director-General, IACA Air Passenger Rights Seminar - 30 May 2012

Regulation 261: original purpose

• Commission’s Explanatory Memorandum of

Proposal for a Regulation (COM 2001/784 ; 21.12.2001, para 5)

• “protect passengers adequately when

confronted by denied boarding or cancellation”

• “dissuade carriers from excessive denial of

boarding or cancellation”

• “give incentives to balance the commercial

advantages against to cost to passengers”

= protection against commercial decisions

Regulation 261: original purpose

• A delay is never a commercial decision, therefore

no compensation under 261

• All events outside an airline’s control are by

definition not commercial decisions

• Provision on ‘extraordinary circumstances’

exonerates airlines from paying compenstation

Regulation 261: poor drafting

• Too vague a description of ‘extraodinary

circumstances’

• ECJ’s decisions
• Airlines’ legitimate expectation: a balanced
• approach. …. the legislator must take into account

the principal objective of the act, but “all the interests involved” Case C- 127/07 Arcelor

Regulation 261: ECJ’s decisions

• Sturgeon: creates new law
• Wallentin and McDonagh: ignore complex operating

environment, the chain of suppliers

• Decisions unbalanced, disproportionate and

political instead of legal

• Airlines have become insurers of last resort

Airlines expect “good regulation” from legislators

• Extraordinary circumstances to be reviewed
• Clarification now, not in 2014
• Way-out: e.g. non-exhaustive list of cases
• Revision not to be based on Sturgeon / Wallentin

cases

• Genuine and automatic “legal redress”
• Airlines to deduct cost of compliance from invoices

when disruptions caused by their providers

• Airlines to remain first contact point for passengers
• Limit on care/assistance (incl. for package

passengers)

Airlines expect “good regulation” from legislators

• Good regulation = reasonable and proportionate

protection of the weakest

• Passengers are weaker than the airlines
• But airlines are weaker than
• Their monopoly providers
• Weather conditions
• Natural disasters…

It is time to fix this !