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The Federal Government has opened up public consultation on its proposed airline customer protection scheme, which notably excludes European-style “pay-on-delay” compensation.
The draft proposal, which can be viewed online, will hold airlines to “minimum standards” of consumer protection, according to Transport Minister Catherine King, which would include prompt refunds, accommodation, transport, and meal vouchers when needed.
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It follows the release of last year’s Aviation White Paper, which put a heavy focus on consumer protection, including the adoption of a charter of customer rights and an independent ombuds scheme.
“The Consumer Charter basically will say this is what you should expect as a passenger in terms of rebooking time, quick and prompt refunds, accommodation, transport if you need it or a meal voucher if that’s what you need, and this is the sort of things and the timeliness with which you can expect it,” the Minister told Sunrise on Monday.
“What we’re trying to do is, in the immediate circumstances where people are delayed, have lost their baggage, trying to really get that done quickly, rather than often people are trying to, days or sometimes weeks and months later, trying to get some form of redress, trying to get it quickly.”
The plan stops short, however, of mandating a compensation scheme for passengers whose flights are delayed or cancelled, as is the case in jurisdictions such as the EU and Canada.
Speaking to the ABC, the Minister said the government was not ruling out such a scheme entirely, but that it was not currently on the agenda.
“In a market that is pretty small, we had to weigh up, how do we – in the moment when people are experiencing a delay, a frustration about lost baggage, what’s happened to them – how do we get remedies to people quickly, versus what happens with schemes where the costs potentially, if they’re large, can be passed on to the travelling public,” she said.
“Obviously, in Europe, there is a compensation scheme that is, of course, defrayed across millions of passengers and hundreds of airlines. We’ve got a much smaller market, so we think we’ve got the balance right here, making sure people get immediate remedies to rectify the situation that they’re in, rather than the European scheme.
“We haven’t ruled out doing that, but really what this is about is lifting the standards overall to make sure passengers get a much better experience when they’re travelling, because, really, at the end of the day, they are at the heart of what airlines and airports are doing, and we want to make sure that passenger experience is as best as it can be.”
Public submissions are open until next month.
