The EU Member States have granted the Council Presidency a mandate to start negotiations with the European Parliament on the reform of the EU air passenger rights regulation.
According to the complaint by the Association of Passenger Rights Advocates (APRA) the mandate proposes raising the compensation threshold from 3 to 4 hours and limiting compensation to 300 euros, regardless of flight distance, which "would have disastrous consequences for millions of European travelers, dismantling protections that have effectively safeguarded passengers for over 20 years".
"The regulation has proven to be highly effective in improving airline performance; for example, a recent peer-reviewed study reported that the current clauses of EC 261 annually reduce the equivalent of 8,400 years the time of the delays suffered by the 1.1 billion air passengers traveling each year in Europe. At the same time, the aviation sector has continued to grow and has remained highly competitive", states Tomasz Pawliszyn, president of APRA.
"The proposed scenario would not only cut passengers' rights in half, leaving those stranded for hours at airports with few options to claim -flights eligible for financial compensation would be reduced from 0.43% to 0.2%-, but lower compensation would make it difficult for passengers to exercise the right to do so due to the high administrative costs of undertaking legal proceedings," explained Pawliszyn.
“Raising the delay threshold does not save airlines money. It incentivizes them to delay more”, says Pawliszyn. “The only way airlines could see their costs increase under current rules would be if they deliberately delayed more flights, and higher delay thresholds would give them every incentive to do so.”
However, this revision, which represents a step backward in passenger rights regulations, continues to be rejected by several governments such as, for example, Germany, Portugal, and Slovenia, who underlined that accepting to initiate conversations does not imply endorsing proposals that would weaken passenger rights.
