IATA has criticized the decision by the US
Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Biden Administration to
raise the cost of air travel by mandating airlines provide
financial compensation to travelers for flight delays and
cancellations, in addition to their current care offerings.
DOT’s Cancellation and Delay
Scoreboard shows that the 10 largest US carriers already offer
meals or cash vouchers to customers during extended delays, while
nine of them also offer complimentary hotel accommodation for
passengers affected by an overnight cancellation.
“Airlines work hard to get their passengers to
their destinations on time and do their best to minimize the
impacts of any delays. Airlines already have financial incentives
to get their passengers to their destination as planned. Managing
delays and cancellations is very costly for airlines. And
passengers can take their loyalty to other carriers if they are
not satisfied with service levels,” said Willie Walsh, IATA’s
Director General. “The added layer of expense that this regulation
will impose will not create a new incentive, but it will have to
be recouped –which is likely to have an impact on ticket prices.”
Additionally, the regulation could raise
unrealistic expectations among travelers that are unlikely to be
met. Most situations would not be covered by this regulation as
weather is responsible for the bulk of air travel delays and
flight cancellations.
Air traffic controller shortages played a
role in last year’s delays and are also an issue in 2023, as the
Federal Aviation Administration has acknowledged with its request
that airlines reduce their flight schedules to the New York
metropolitan area.
Runway closures and equipment failures also
contribute to delays and cancellations, whilst supply chain
issues in the aircraft manufacturing and support sectors have
resulted in aircraft delivery delays and parts shortages over
which airlines have little or no control but which impact
reliability.
While the DOT carefully notes that airlines will
only be responsible for compensating passengers for delays and
cancellations for which the airline is deemed responsible, severe
weather and other issues can have knock-on effects for days or
even weeks later, at which point it can be difficult to impossible
to isolate a single causal factor.
Furthermore, experience shows that punitive
regulations like this have no impact on the level of flight delays
and cancellations. A thorough examination of the European Union’s
passenger rights regulation, EU261, released in 2020 by the
European Commission found the opposite to be true. Cancellations overall nearly doubled from 67,000 in 2011 to
131,700 in 2018. The same outcome occurred with flight delays,
which rose from 60,762 to 109,396. While the share of airline
attributable delays as a percentage of total delays shrank, the
report attributed this to an increase in delays classed as
extraordinary circumstances – such as air traffic control delays.
“Aviation is a highly integrated activity
involving a number of different partners, each of whom has a vital
role in ensuring the smooth operation of the air transport system.
Instead of singling out airlines as this proposal most assuredly
does, the Biden Administration should be working toward ensuring a
fully funded FAA, a fully staffed controller workforce, and
completing the rollout of the decades-delayed FAA NextGen air
traffic control modernization program,” Walsh added.
According to Monday’s announcement, the rule
will be issued later this year.
