A €2 fee to be added to the cost of tickets by Ryanair to cover flight cancellations and delays and has prompted a call for EU regulations reform.
The ‘compensation levy’ will apply to all bookings made from Monday (April 4) to cover costs of meeting EU regulations to cover passengers when flights are delayed or cancelled even by events outside the airline’s control.
The move has prompted calls for an urgent overhaul of so-called EU261 regulations which are supposed to protect passengers from delays and cancelled flights.
Bob Atkinson, travel expert at www.travelsupermarket.com said: “Whilst on the face of it this new charge by Ryanair may not be welcomed by passengers, the airline is at the very least being transparent about the fee.
“Every other airline that flies in or out of the EU will have had to have absorbed these costs as a result of the EU261 regulation payouts and this will have manifested in either increased air fares for customers or reduced margins for shareholders.
“The issue at the heart of the matter is that the current EU261 regulations fail to protect travellers in the way they should. For example, the regulation is arbitrary; it bears no relation to the fare paid by the passenger and does not cover all journeys flying into the European Union.
“These regulations need a significant overhaul in order to ensure all customers who have a genuine right to protection and compensation can receive this without undue complications and also for airlines to be able to seek redress for cancellations for matters outside of their control, e.g. the closure of airspace by governments.
“The regulations also cover for compensation on flight delays, however many airlines are currently not paying this out pending the review of a court case under these regulations involving Air France. This is leaving many customers who have suffered flight delays out of pocket, unsure if they will ever receive the compensation they believe is due to them.”
The no-frills giant said it had suffered costs of more than €100 million due to cancellations, delays and providing “right to care, compensation and legal expenses” arising from more than 15,000 flight cancellations and over 2.4 million disrupted passengers in the past year. The main causes were the Icelandic ash cloud, snow closures of airports and air traffic control strikes across Europe.
Ryanair claimed that it is “unfair and discriminatory” that airlines are liable for providing refunds, meals, hotels and phone calls during such incidents when even travel insurance companies avoid liability during these ‘force majeure’ events, and when competing transport providers (rail, ferries and coach operators) have no such liability under EU261 regulations.
“The €2 levy will help to defray these costs, which are not recoverable from governments, ATC providers or airports and which therefore fall on the airlines in their entirety,” the carrier said. It will reduce or drop the fee if the EU regulations are reformed as its cancellation and delay costs reduce over the coming years.
A Ryanair spokesman said: “While we regret the imposition of this €2 EU261 levy, the extraordinary costs which have been imposed on us by delays and cancellations under these discriminatory regulations must be recovered from passengers.”