Why are some major airlines not covered by the ATOL consumer protection scheme? It just seems madness, particularly in the current economic crisis.
Tour operators are forced to be part of the scheme, which provides consumers with protection for a levy of just £1, and yet airlines – which are surely the most critical part of any package during a crisis – are not.
So despite the collapses of XL, Zoom and so on, vast numbers of holidaymakers are still taking a huge risk with thousands of pounds of their hard earned cash if they are not booking as part of a package. Let’s remember that only one-third of travellers flying abroad today book their tickets as part of such a package.
Even worse, I noticed this week that when I tried to book an easyJet flight with a credit card – rather than a debit card, which would at least have given me some protection via the credit card company’s insurance programme – I was being asked to pay an extra charge of more than £20. And this was on a booking of just over £800 – a 4% hit.
Is one of the parties really that worried? Is someone even profiteering from heightened anxiety? Either way, it left me feeling edgy.
And this is the deeper problem. At a time when the travel industry is on a knife edge – with consumers considering carefully whether or not to take that holiday, when the looming recession could well take an even larger bite out of the industry’s profits – few people at the top are doing anything to add some much-needed reassurance.
One suspects that some airline bosses have just become blinded by their own dogma. They have been arguing so long, and lobbying so hard, against any extra regulation that they can no longer see the wood for the trees.
Equally the government – which has been the target for the aggressive airline lobbyists – simply cannot recognise financial protection of air travellers as a political priority.
That both still feel this way is partly due to the responsible behaviour of the rest of the industry, which pulled out all the stops to rescue stranded travellers after recent collapses. Otherwise things would have felt much worse.
But should many more carriers go to the wall, you can guarantee the spotlight for irresponsibility will start turning on the legislators. And it will start turning on the anti-protectionists.
- Opinon: ATOL protection is still not clear to consumers (Jane Atkins, Freedom Travel Group)
