Annual Report 2002—2003 - Air Transport Users Council

Representing PassengersAir Passenger Rights In EuropeOver many years, our Annual Reports have included repeated reference to our effortsto promote air passenger rights on a Europe-wide basis, both independently andthrough our EU umbrella organisation, the Federation of Air Transport UserRepresentatives in Europe (FATURE). These efforts received potentially a major boostwhen, in March 2000, the European Commission published a consultation paper on airpassenger rights in the EU.In June the same year, having analysed responses to its consultation paper, theCommission published a Communication setting out a number of areas where it wouldpropose legislation or promote the development of voluntary initiatives by the airtransport industry. We have seen progress on most of these areas during the periodcovered by this report. But, at the time of writing, we are not yet ready to conclude thatthis work on air passenger rights is complete.Denied Boarding, Cancellation and DelayEach year, far too many air travellers suffer the consequences of overbooking,cancellations or delays. There is an existing EC Regulation on Denied BoardingCompensation (DBC) for passengers "bumped" off an overbooked flight departing froman EU airport. But it dates from 1992 and some of its provisions need updating. Thereis still no legislation setting out easily enforceable passenger rights in the event ofcancellation or delay.A 1998 proposal for amending the DBC Regulation did not come to fruition. Andthough we have had some success in having the issues of cancellation and delayaddressed through means other than legislation, these improvements still do not go farenough. We were therefore delighted when, in December 2001, the Commissionpublished a comprehensive proposal for a Regulation on compensation and assistanceto air passengers in the event of denied boarding, cancellation and delay.In February 2002, the UK Government invited comments on the Commission'sproposal. We made a detailed submission to the Government in May. Our submissionwelcomed intentions to increase the compensation for denied boarding from the 1992levels and to establish rules for compensation and assistance for cancellation anddelay.We also strongly endorsed proposals for enforcement of the new Regulation: theabsence of enforcement provisions in the current DBC Regulation has in the pastfrustrated our efforts to step in when individual airlines have appeared to us to besystematically flouting its provisions.12