Brussels (The Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The EU Commission has updated air passenger rights guidelines to enhance compliance and coordination. New guidelines address disabilities and mobility issues. A Eurobarometer survey highlights ongoing information gaps and varying passenger satisfaction.
The EU Commission has published revised interpretative guidelines on air passenger rights that will enable compliance with regulations and coordinate enforcement by national bodies. Since 2016, the EU Commission has been delivering guidelines to address common concerns presented by national enforcement bodies, passengers and their alliances, and industry representatives. Modified interpretative guidelines on the rights of persons with disabilities and persons with lowered mobility when travelling by air have also been issued.
How will the updated guidelines improve passenger rights enforcement?
Passenger rights represented at the EU level are applied by transport providers and implemented by national bodies. Differences between national practices can create confusion for passengers when they encounter challenges during their journey, especially if it travels EU borders. It can also be challenging for passengers to understand the necessary measures and find appropriate assistance. EU Commission states that these guidelines will help enhance implementation and complement the Commission’s actions to raise awareness of passenger rights, including through traditional online awareness-raising campaigns, the Your Europe web pages and a passenger rights mobile app.
How does the Eurobarometer survey reflect on passenger rights awareness?
Guidelines come together with the unleashing of a new Eurobarometer survey, which emphasises that most Europeans still feel that they lack adequate information on their passenger rights, even if awareness improved compared to five years ago.
What differences exist in passenger rights information across transport modes?
Results underline that respondents were most likely to regard well knowledgeable about passenger rights for trips by rail (33%), followed by air (30%), coach (27%) and then yacht/ferry (16%). The survey also reveals that 84% of respondents requesting service for persons with disabilities or decreased mobility were satisfied with the response.
35% of travellers have noticed information about passenger rights, up 13 percentage points since 2019. Most generally, this was in railway stations (9%, +5). 75% of aircraft passengers welcomed pre-travel information on their rights, corresponding to 61% for rail, 51% for coaches, and 54% for vessels/ferries. Awareness-raising remains incredibly important.
How satisfied are passengers with the response to mobility needs?
Satisfaction with how important disruptions were tolerated is highest for flights (66%, +12 pp, followed by vessels/ferries (53%, -3 pp), rail (52%, +8 pp), and coaches (50%, +8 pp). The use of single access for multimodal journeys remains fixed at 11% (unchanged), with rail/coach (39%, +9 pp) and air/rail (25%, +1 pp) the most typical combinations. 32% (+7 pp) faced problems, 13% (+4 pp) almost skipped a connection, and 11% (+3 pp) missed a link.
In the next steps, the guidelines can now be operated by operators and national enforcement bodies. In addition, the effects of the Eurobarometer survey, as well as the guidelines, are unrestricted to the co-legislators as they believe the two Commission proposals of November 2023 on implementing passenger rights and on passenger rights in the context of multimodal travels, as well as the Commission’s 2013 legislative proposal on air passenger rights.
