Twenty years after European air passengers’ rights legislation came into effect, airline bosses say the rules – known as EU261 – are costing €8bn per year.
Meeting in Brussels, the CEOs of the leading European airline groups said the burden of meeting the regulations is passed on to passengers in higher fares.
Michael O’Leary, chief executive of Ryanair, told The Independent: “EU261 is costing each one of our passengers €8 (£7) on their ticket price.”
Ourania Georgoutsakou, managing director of the pressure group Airlines for Europe, said: “The European Commission has confirmed that 261 as it stands today costs €8bn a year. So clearly there’s a need to be reformed.
“There’s a couple of easy fixes that Airlines for Europe see. First, a list of ‘exceptional circumstances’. The courts that have to apply these rules are swamped with requests and paperwork.
“The other is to extend the delay threshold.”
At present passengers’ entitlement to care begins at two hours on shorter flights. Mr O’Leary told The Independent: “ATC [air-traffic control delays] starting from next weekend will be considerably more than two hours on many flights.”
Carsten Spohr, chief executive of the Lufthansa Group, told The Independent: “Passengers are paying more for EU261 than the airlines are making in profits.”
Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the European sustainable transport and tourism commissioner, said: “Negotiations on passenger rights reform are moving forward.
“We cannot create rules that overwhelm the industry with financial burdens, that risk holding back growth. So we need to balance financial stability for airlines with strong protections for passengers.”
Under the European air passengers’ rights rules, which the UK copied and pasted after Brexit, airlines have a duty of care at times of disruption – such as the closure of Heathrow airport last Friday following a power cut.
At least 250,000 passengers had their flights cancelled on Friday and Saturday.
The Independent calculates the cost of care and new flights for them, together with the loss of revenue from cancelled departures, was around £100m.
British Airways, which has more than half the flights at Heathrow, is most exposed to the loss.
Sophie Chapman, Heathrow’s surface access director, told the London Assembly on Thursday morning: “The airport is using power like the size of a small city, so it really is very difficult to build resilience for all of the power that the airport would use.”
She also said: “The airport took action overnight to ensure that a full service could run on Saturday and that’s exactly what happened.”
More than 100 flights to and from Heathrow were cancelled on Saturday, adding to the 1,300-plus cancellations on Friday.
Source: independent.co.uk
