We call on Members of the European Parliament to be ambitious in their position regarding the Commission’s proposed revision of laws on the rights of passengers during air travel and multimodal transport. The proposals, launched at the end of 2023, fell very short of our expectations, and national governments plan to weaken them even further.
Summary
- Persons with disabilities still face nightmarish challenges due to denial of boarding, broken and destroyed assistive equipment, and lack of compensation, among others.
- Members of the European Parliament should submit amendments to the revision of passengers’ rights laws that protect disability rights.
- The amendments should fully prohibit denial of boarding on the basis of disability, establish the full liability of operators regarding damaged and lost assistive equipment and allow persons with disabilities to travel with their assistant free of charge when imposed by the carrier for safety reasons
The problems
Our recent submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities clearly outlines the many challenges of passengers with disabilities.
Persons with disabilities cannot travel independently or spontaneously due to mobility barriers. These include the lack of accessibility in vehicles and infrastructure as well as the need to pre-notify intention to travel in advance to receive appropriate assistance.
Laws on passengers’ rights still allow denial of the right to transport due to ‘safety considerations’ (which are often not based on clear and transparent rules), and inaccessibility of vehicles and transport infrastructures.
While passengers receive some kind of compensation for delay, cancellation or denied boarding, persons with disabilities are not entitled to compensation when assistance does not show up, information is not accessible or when they are denied boarding.
Broken or lost mobility equipment is not fully compensated during air travel. Air transport is also the only transport mode in which an accompanying person required by the carrier for safety reasons has to pay for the extra ticket.
Our demands
The current revision presents an opportunity that Members of the European Parliament must take to protect the rights of the over 100 million persons with disabilities in the EU.
The proposal on enforcement of passenger rights must:
- Address the remaining gaps in Regulation 1107/2006 in air passenger rights for persons with disabilities and reduced mobility (putting an end to cases of denial of boarding based on lack of accessibility and general safety considerations, eliminate prenotification time for assistance, establish full liability of airlines and airports regarding damaged and lost mobility equipment and ensure that, the accompanying person, when mandated by the airline, travels free of charge).
- Require that infrastructure managers and transport operators in all transport modes gather and publish data on the assistance provided to persons with disabilities and related complaints (Service Quality Standards)
- Require the Commission to publish a yearly report in which all the information published by carriers and infrastructure managers through Service Quality Standards can be compared.
- In all passenger rights regulations, NEBs to inform about other redress mechanisms available, including equality bodies
The proposal on passenger rights in multimodal journeys must:
- Make a stronger link with the European Accessibility Act.
- Eliminate pre-notification time to request assistance.
- Expand rights of passengers with reduced mobilities (PRM) to other categories of multimodal tickets, not only single multimodal contracts.
- Expand the responsibilities of the Single Point of Contact for Assistance.
In order to achieve this, we call on Members of the European Parliament can achieve this by submitting the amendments suggested by the European Disability Forum:
- Download a summary of our amendments for enforcement of passenger rights (Word)
- Download a summary of our amendments for a Regulation on passenger rights in the multimodal context (Word)
If you would like to receive the full set of amendments, please contact Daniel Casas, EDF’s Accessibility Officer