The Biden administration and the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) on Monday proposed new rules that would require airlines to compensate passengers when significant flight delays or cancellations are caused by something within the airline’s control.
In a statement issued on May 9, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) emphasized that such a rule will be issued at the end of this year, VisaGuide.World reports.
Through its plan, the DOT also announced that the ten largest US carriers will provide food and cash coupons to customers during extended delays. At the same time, nine of them also offer free hotel accommodation to all passengers whose flights were canceled during the night.
“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,” IATA’s Director General Willie Walsh pointed out in this regard.
According to Walsh, managing delays and cancellations is costly for airlines considering that passengers may lose their trust in other carriers if they are not satisfied with service levels.
However, such a regulation will not be able to solve most situations because the weather is responsible for many flight delays and cancelations.
As IATA explains, last year, the lack of air traffic controllers played a role in delays which remains a problem for this year as well, considering that the Federal Aviation Administration has accepted that airlines reduce flight schedules in the New York metropolitan area. Another problem that also affects cancelations and delays is track closures and equipment failures.
In a study conducted by the European Commission in 2020 on the current level of passenger protection in the EU, it was revealed that punitive regulations like this do not affect flight delays and cancellations.
Based on this report, in 2021, overall cancelations almost doubled from 67,000 to 131,700 in 2018. The same result was found in flight delays, which increased from 60,762 to 109,396.
Moreover, issues of paying out of pocket for unplanned costs such as food or lodging rose to the spotlight in the US after a Southwest Airlines travel debacle in December that resulted in the cancelation of 17,000 flights. For a single day in December, the airline also canceled more than 3,000 flights.
Data provided by the Bureau of Transport Statistics revealed that last year cancellations rose to around 2.7 percent of all flights. Such data also shows that, except for 2020, the overall cancellation rate has been below two percent every year since 2015.
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