Annual Report 2002Ã¢Â€Â”2003 - Air Transport Users Council

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accommodation – and possibly other elements such as car hire – for a passenger, thearrangements should be regarded as a package and enjoy the same protection as apackage purchased from a tour operator's brochure. Our submission thereforeendorsed the Authority's proposals for amending the ATOL Regulations.In our response, we concluded that such an amendment to the ATOL Regulationswould extend the scope of financial protection to more passengers. It would also bringthe ATOL Regulations into line with the Package Travel Regulations, which call for onesingle source of protection, something that would provide greater clarity.The consultation also asked for views on wider consumer protection issues, particularlyin the context of an ever-changing commercial environment and changing consumerpreferences. Because more and more passengers put together their own itineraries ina series of bookings with separate suppliers, the CAA questioned whether existinglegislation was best placed to continue to provide sufficient protection.The AUC has repeatedly called for a financial protection scheme for bookings withscheduled airlines. We acknowledged in our comments to the CAA that a schemecovering only scheduled flights could still leave gaps in financial protection for travellerswho made their holiday arrangements under separate bookings.Meanwhile, we considered it fundamentally important that consumers were fully awareof whether and for what part of their travel arrangements they were protected. Wherethey were not protected, information should be available as to how they might securesuch protection. The CAA and the AUC have both for some time sought to provide thisinformation and will continue to do so.Consultation on Responsibilities for Aviation HealthA House of Lords Select Committee report on Air Travel and Health in November 2000identified a number of areas where air travel might affect the health of air passengersand crew. The Government has since then established the Aviation Health WorkingGroup (of which the AUC is a member) to address the recommendations of the report.In seeking to ensure that action on the recommendations was taken forward theGovernment identified a need to establish where responsibility should lie for developingthe necessary expertise and for formulating technical advice and policyrecommendations. It therefore published a consultation paper seeking views on howbest to organise the work needed to support the Government’s policies on airpassenger and crew health, specifically as regards to which body should haveresponsibilities in this area.In our response, we supported the Department for Transport’s (DfT) proposal that theDfT and Department of Health should share a broad, strategic policy role on aviationhealth and that the CAA should take the lead in the provision of technical advice on thedevelopment of policies. We agreed that the CAA was best placed to offer suchtechnical advice, as it already possessed the necessary expertise on aircraft design16
and operation.We expressed concern, however, that the consultation paper only called for thespecialist unit merely to provide advice to industry, to consumer groups and to otherinterested parties as opposed to promulgating or publishing advice itself. Weacknowledged the resource implications of requiring the unit itself to promulgateinformation, and indeed that the AUC had a role to play in this area. But our concernwas that the responsibilities of the new unit should not be so precisely defined as topreclude any role at all in promoting aviation health advice directly to passengers.House Of Lords Inquiry into the Accountability Of RegulatorsThis House of Lords Inquiry included questions about the relationship betweenregulators and their associated consumer councils. We made a largely factualsubmission, concentrating on the relationship between the CAA and the AUC.However, we took the opportunity to draw attention to the fact that the CAA was underno statutory obligation to support the AUC and to state that we would prefer that it was.BMI British Midland/United Airlines Alliance Expansion AgreementIn last year's report, we referred to an application from the UK's BMI British Midlandand the US' United Airlines to the OFT for clearance to expand their existing allianceagreement. We had said in our submission to the OFT that the airlines' proposalsappeared to us to be a matter of the two airlines bringing together their networks in acomplementary way to the potential benefit of consumers. Principally, we thought thisalliance would provide stronger competition at Heathrow to British Airways and itspartner airlines. At the time of writing of last year's report, the OFT had not reached itsverdict on the airlines' application.In August 2002, the OFT published, and invited comments on, its provisional findingthat the BMI/United application could provide benefits to consumers that wouldoutweigh possible anti-competitive effects, and that the two airlines should therefore bepermitted to proceed with their proposals. We made a brief further submissionendorsing the OFT's preliminary findings.The OFT subsequently announced its approval for the alliance expansion which, in anyevent, was always intended to come into force at such time as BMI achieved itslong-held aspiration to secure access to routes to the US out of Heathrow. At the timeof the application, it had appeared that BMI might be about to secure access toHeathrow (the AUC has consistently supported BMI's case for being granted thisaccess). In the event, however, the UK and US Governments have not been able toagree on terms under which this could be achieved.EU-US Air ServicesWe have referred in previous Annual Reports to the European Commission's desire to17
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Page 21 and 22: THE AUC IN 2002/03ChairmanIan Hamer
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Annual Report 2002Ã¢Â€Â”2003 - Air Transport Users Council

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