Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-07-02-Speech-3-291"
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"en.20030702.9.3-291"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we are all aware that overbookings, cancellations and delays are particularly frequent occurrences in the summer months that lie before us, and so the news we convey will be understood by all. It is that, in future, passengers will have greater legal certainty. When these things happen, they will get substantially better assistance and twice as much by way of compensation, not only on regular services but also on charter flights and in respect of various services offered by travel operators.
It is, unfortunately, only next summer that this good news for passengers will be for real. While this is, on the one hand, attributable to the difficult situation in which airlines currently find themselves, it also represents an opportunity – an opportunity to supply all passengers, in good time, with comprehensive information, comparable, for example, to the charter of passengers’ rights displayed at all airports. Perhaps the airlines will get together and set up a desk at each airport, one that would be readily recognisable and at which passengers could make claims. After all, the best laws are of no use if they are not known about and if they cannot be implemented in a consumer-friendly way.
We are grateful to the rapporteur for the work he has done. He has always sought compromise, and has worked well with all the political groups. We nonetheless have two points of disagreement with him. One has to do with package flights, where it is not quite clear what he really wants. We are convinced that they do not belong in the regulation, as they are covered by their own directive. The second has to do with how compensation for cancellations is to be handled, where we will endorse the Council’s approach, which is more consumer-friendly than what the rapporteur has proposed.
The amount paid by way of compensation should depend on the time of notification and on the extent to which the alternative flights offered differ from the original travel contract. What might the side-effects of the regulation be? The best thing would of course be if the cases described were to be drastically reduced in future. If they are caused by unforeseen circumstances, additional competition between airlines might help to make them more user-friendly. This might also mean that, in addition to the areas already referred to, indicators could also show the reliability of baggage handling and the subjective perceptions of the quality of the service that the airlines provide. For that reason, there is a need in Europe for a ranking of user-friendliness, such as exists in the USA.
As a number of Members have said, it is indeed the case that we could do with comparable rules for all carriers, but the fact that we have not yet been able to come up with rules for other carriers is not a reason for dispensing with them in air travel."@en1
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