EUROPEAN COMMISSION GIVES PASSENGER RIGHTS A HIGHER PRIORITY THAN AIR SAFETY

23/12/2008

By welcoming yesterday’s decision by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which sets a legal precedent for airlines to pay compensation for flights cancelled for technical reasons, the European Commission is putting passenger rights ahead of passenger safety, says the European Regions Airline Association (ERA). Airlines are now faced with additional commercial pressures which are unnecessary and wholly avoidable. There will be some occasions, in marginal conditions, where knowledge and experience would otherwise dictate that it would be more prudent not to fly.

“I am appalled that the European Commission has welcomed this ill-conceived judgement from the ECJ. Members of the ECJ cannot be expected to understand the serious safety implications of their judgement: the European Commission can,” says ERA Director General, Mike Ambrose.

The case in question concerns the scope of the “extraordinary circumstances” exemption in Regulation 261/2004 on Compensation and Assistance to Passengers in the Event of Denied Boarding, Cancellations and Long Delays. Case C-549/07 Friederike Wallentin-Hermann v Alitalia, which led to the cancellation of an Alitalia flight from Vienna to Brindisi via Rome on 28 June 2005, resulted from a complex engine defect in the turbine. The repair of the aircraft necessitated the dispatch of spare parts and engineers, and was not completed until 8 July 2005. Yesterday’s court ruling states that: “the resolution of a technical problem caused by failure to maintain an aircraft must [therefore] be regarded as inherent in the normal exercise of an air carrier’s activity. Consequently, technical problems which come to light during maintenance of aircraft or on account of failure to carry out such maintenance do not constitute, in themselves, ‘extraordinary circumstances’.”

Ambrose comments: “The ECJ judgement applies needless commercial pressure on crews to accept operations that might comply with all existing safety regulations but which, when all circumstances are considered, are contrary to the aircraft commander’s instincts and experience for safe flight.

“The primary ‘passenger right’ is to expect safe travel – passenger rights are of trivial importance compared to the ongoing airline objective of maintaining public safety. For decades, European air transport has been successful in encouraging all personnel concerned with air safety, especially operating crews, to identify and report issues that negatively affect the safety of operations: the ECJ ruling risks undermining years of progress in improving safety performance. Urgent action is needed by the European Commission to mitigate this flawed and ill-informed decision by the ECJ,” Ambrose concluded. 

ENDS 


Click Here to view the full judgement by the European Court of Justice (English)
Click Here to view the European Commission’s Press Release