The political agreement reached today on the revision of EU air passenger rights (EU261) is a deeply disappointing missed opportunity. Rather than making the regulation workable for everyone and improving regional connectivity, this rushed compromise threatens the future of European air connectivity.
Instead of fixing a fundamentally broken and outdated system, policymakers rushed to reach an institutional compromise. The result adds new burdens on regional carriers and introduces creative, last-minute options lacking any real-world operational analysis, while granting alleviation only to a minority of long-haul flights.
This outcome reflects an unconstructive process and a total disregard for the operational constraints of regional flying. Montserrat Barriga, Director General of the European Regions Airline Association (ERA) said:
“There are no winners with this deal. Policymakers had a chance to fix a broken system; instead, they rushed a compromise, piling on new obligations that increase costs and complexity without bringing any additional clarity. This benefits nobody, neither the passenger nor the airlines, and it is frankly shocking that the deal still fails to account for circumstances beyond an airline’s control, particularly those directly related to safety.
Many regional airlines operate thin routes, connect peripheral communities, and often fly from a single base with limited spare aircraft and no instant rerouting options. You cannot force rules designed for long-haul onto regional airlines and expect connectivity to survive. The direct consequence of this unworkable agreement will be continuous crippling costs, higher fares, and the threatening of essential air links that millions of Europeans rely upon every day.”
A framework detached from reality
Regional airlines have warned for over 13 years that the passenger rights framework is unworkable for their specific operational model. Today’s agreement ignores those warnings and actively makes the situation worse by:
- Ignoring the mathematics of regional flying: The agreement preserves a punitive compensation regime where compensation often far surpasses the original ticket prices, while maintaining a rigid three-hour threshold that ignores the logistical realities of single-base operations and limited backup networks.
- Piling on impossible obligations: Instead of re-balancing the framework, the agreement permanently locks years of restrictive EU Court of Justice rulings into the official text. It then goes even further by adding completely new burdens, such as forcing airlines to arrange rerouting through alternative modes of transport like rail or road, alongside unworkable self-rerouting provisions and restrictions on commercial freedoms.
- Setting double standards: While the EU acknowledged that different business models require different treatment by reducing compensation exposure by 50% for three-to-four-hour delays on long-haul flights, it blatantly refused to apply this same logic to the unique, highly constrained environment of regional aviation. This ultimately benefits non-EU carriers competing with EU airlines on long haul routes only.
Europe’s regions need a passenger rights framework that actually protects consumers by ensuring the airlines they rely on can remain financially viable. By ignoring the operational realities of regional aviation, the EU has delivered an agreement that falls disastrously short of that objective.
ERA will continue to fight for a regulatory environment that ensures both fair consumer protection and the survival of the regional aviation sector, which remains the backbone of Europe’s territorial cohesion.