Consumer advocates: EU plans negative for air passengers

Berlin/Brussels (dpa) – German consumer advocates have opposed plans to relax EU compensation rules for passengers in the event of flight delays. If the proposals were implemented, airlines would no longer have to pay around 85 percent of the compensation currently owed, reports the Federal Association of Consumer Organizations (VZBV) in Berlin. This was shown by flight data analyses conducted by the software company Lennoc on behalf of the Dutch consumer protection organization Consumentenbond.

So far, passengers have been entitled to compensation between 250 and 600 euros based on EU Regulation 261/2004 for delays of three hours or more, scaled according to distance. Currently, a proposal is being discussed in Brussels to raise the threshold to at least five hours, and for long-haul flights even to twelve hours. Recently, the airline association A4E, which includes the German airline Lufthansa, has advocated for a new regulation.

“Air travelers must be able to rely on being adequately compensated in the event of flight cancellations and delays in the future. The impending changes to passenger rights would be quite a crash landing for the existing rights of air travelers,” says VZBV expert Jutta Gurkmann. The future German government must advocate at the EU level to legally anchor and expand the existing level of protection. (April 8)