The European Commission has published recommendations for airlines and tourism in the context of the fuel crisis, in particular obliging air carriers to provide full compensation to passengers if a flight is cancelled due to excessively high fuel prices. The document is published on the European Commission's website.
"Airlines will be able to cancel flights without compensation for passengers only if there is no fuel at all. We do not recognise high fuel prices as force majeure and a reason for cancelling a flight without compensation. From a business perspective, high fuel prices are completely predictable", said Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, a representative of the European Commission, at a briefing in Brussels, presenting these standards.
“We have not yet observed a real shortage of aviation fuel in Europe, we only see a situation of increasing prices for it“, she noted.
EC recommendations
The set of “European Commission recommendations“ states:
First, that passengers whose flights are cancelled due to excessively high fuel prices “continue to enjoy all rights, including the right to re-routing, airport security or financial compensation“.
Second, the European Commission confirmed that airlines “are required to inform passengers of the full and final price of the ticket at the time of booking“. They cannot increase the price after that, regardless of the price of fuel, which also leads to the problem of force majeure.
Thirdly, European airlines could be given the right to waive the pre-fuelling rule, which stipulates that in some cases an aircraft must take off from a European airport with fuel for the next return flight or at least 90% of its tanks if there is a possibility that the destination airport will run out of fuel. This rule actually leads to increased fuel consumption, as an aircraft loaded with fuel for a two-way flight takes off with a significantly higher take-off weight than with a conventional one-way refueling.
Fourth, airlines are given the right to use their allocated airport runway slots more flexibly to optimize their flights.
Fifth, the European Commission has somewhat expanded the possibilities for EU governments to provide support to their airlines for operating socially important flights.