Community legislation 261 is successful, but passengers continue to have difficulties obtaining compensation. This is the conclusion of a study presented by the European Court of Auditors in Brussels.
The study, “EU passengers’ rights are comprehensive, but does not prevent passengers from fighting to defend them”, is available here and constitutes a complete audit of the exercise of passenger rights.
The presentation confirms that EU passengers have a well-developed rights system. For air passengers, this protection takes the form of EC Regulation 261/2004. The European Commission sees passenger rights legislation as one of its major successes in terms of consumer empowerment. Therefore, the problems are not related to insufficient protection, but to the general lack of information for travelers as well as application problems. Research shows that the Commission’s proposal to reduce carriers’ assistance and compensation costs and to increase the waiting time from 3 to 5 hours was based only on very limited data provided to the Commission by airlines, the elements of the proposal are incorrect.
In addition, a recently published research paper by the College of Europe confirmed the effectiveness of Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 on the reduction of flight delays. He also stressed the importance of the work done by the European demand sector to encourage airlines to improve their services. Continuing its work on the representation of passenger rights in Europe, APRA today participated in the stakeholder roundtable organized to present the ECA report in Brussels.
The audit report also indicates that the requesting organizations and the out-of-court dispute settlement bodies dealing with similar issues cover gaps in the implementation of passenger rights legislation. Describes cases in which airlines ignored and rejected passengers until they recruited a claims processing agency, which helped passengers to enforce their rights.
APRA President Christian Nielsen said: “The report shows that people want compensation because they are suffering the effects of a disturbed leak, but two-thirds of passengers do not claim legal compensation because they feel they will not succeed or even worse, or will not even know what they are entitled to, we are proud of the work done so far by the European applications sector to close the gulf of awareness and justice We hope to help more and more passengers around the world understand and enforce their rights against non-compliant airlines. “
APRA
APRA was created in 2017 to provide a single voice to protect air passengers. It was founded by the largest global airlines clearing companies. The mission of APRA is to provide maximum protection for air passengers. The association is actively engaged in constructive dialogue with European and national institutions, as well as with airlines, airports, national law enforcement agencies and other stakeholders.
APRA offers a combination of consistent data, in-depth analysis and collective expertise to inform policy makers and promote the interest of European air passengers. AirHelp, EUclaim, Flightright and Reclamador are founding members of APRA.
