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EU countries have agreed to increase the amount of time passengers will have to wait before they can claim compensation for a delayed flight after 12 years of negotiations.
Passengers will only be able to apply for compensation for short-haul flights if they are delayed for four hours or more, while for long-haul flights they will have to wait six hours, EU transport ministers said on Thursday.
Currently, passengers can apply for compensation if any flight is more than three hours delayed.
Ministers also agreed, as part of revisions to 31 different air passenger rights, to increase the amount of compensation marginally for those delayed on short-haul flights from €250 to €300, but cut it for long-haul flights from €600 to €500.
Other rights agreed included automating forms for compensation, restrictions to grounds for denying reimbursement and putting more responsibility on airlines to provide rerouting and accommodation when there are long delays, as well as strengthened rights for passengers with disabilities.
The revision of the EU’s air passenger rights was first proposed in 2013 by the European Commission, but it has taken 12 years for EU states to come to an agreement on the timeframe for compensation.
Airlines argued that mandating a longer delay threshold would give them a “fighting chance to minimise delays and avoid flight cancellations”, the industry body Airlines for Europe (A4E) said in a letter to the German minister for transport this week.
A4E represents Europe’s major airlines, including Lufthansa, Air France-KLM and Ryanair.
It said that 70 per cent of flights that end up being cancelled could be saved at a five-hour threshold “benefiting up to 10mn passengers per year”.
“Europe has been waiting for transparent and workable passenger rights for 12 years and member states have fallen at the final hurdle to deliver . . . member states have diluted the European Commission’s original proposal and introduced even more complexity,” A4E said in a statement.
The European Commission originally proposed extending the time to five hours for short-haul flights and nine for long-haul.
Politicians, however, have veered away from delivering the politically unpalatable message that passengers will have to lose out. Germany was one of the strongest opponents of increasing the limits, along with Spain.
In a statement on Thursday, German lawmakers from the European People’s Party, Europe’s largest political group, said that “decreasing the rights to compensation for air passengers would be a step in the wrong direction. Reimbursement after a three-hour delay has been standard for many years and should remain so”.
“No politician wants to say more than four hours,” one senior EU diplomat said.
The member states will have to negotiate with the European parliament before the revisions become final law.
