Ștefan Mușoiu, MEP, S&D Group, member of the Romanian Social-Democrat Party (PSD), requested explanations during a recent Tourism and Transport Committee (TRAN) meeting in the European Parliament regarding the monitoring and better protection of rights of airline passengers.
The social democrat member expressed his displeasure with a series of situations and practices of EU domestic companies and also of oversees ones, complementary to the companies that intermediate the sale of travel tickets.
“The last TRAN committee meeting gave me the opportunity to ask several questions for clarifications and further action regarding a series of shortcomings that we all face, when we choose or are in need to travel by plane, and we just find ourselves, sometimes, in the postures of victims, our own money and time being at stake,” Ștefan Mușoiu declared.
He continued “A range of abuses, which we didn’t even think about or even the untimely cancellation of the flight, or the overbooking situation affecting and forcing passengers to change all their travel and financial plans they made, should be there no more.”
“Most of the time passengers are neither compensated enought, nor additional options are offered to them when urgent matters that request traveling occur. It happens to all of us, young, old, disabled, businessmen, politicians, children.
“No social category is exempt from such major inconveniences! And such situations have ended up multiplying at the level of the European Union, which is why I am prepared to amend EU legislation to stop such deviations from the smooth running of passengers’ travel plans.
“Strong controls by authorities, specifically authorised with new powers, and substantial compensations for passengers, coming from the airlines or companies that intermediate ticket sales, as well as sound fines, calculated according to the turnover of these companies should be in place,” announced Ștefan Musoiu as part his upcoming legislative agenda.
The MEP himself has been a victim to unfair commercial practices
The MEP admits that he has himself faced these types of unfair commercial practices in recent years. He reveals that he had problems due to overbooking, i.e. the sale of more plane tickets than the available seats in the aircraft, or rather inexplicable increase in ticket prices from one day to the next as unjustified variations in the costs of travel tickets or the lack of possibility to change the name of a plane ticket holder, after booking it.
“Everyone complains about these impediments, but it is very complicated, expensive and time-consuming to go to court on these matters,” explains Mușoiu.
“Furthermore, there is no uniform legislation at EU level and no supervisory and regulatory authorities great enough to handle such type of problem in a much better way,” he continued.
“There are also no clear and uniform regulations on the dimensions of hand luggage. Not accepting disabled people in wheelchairs on a certain flight, it was explained to me that this also depends on the airline policy that operates the flight. It can invoke security reasons for which they can refuses to take in these passengers.
“It sounds insensitive, but this is the reality.”
Mușoiu plans to amend existing legislation in force, in order to make it more customer focussed
“I will work to stop all these restrictive or abusive practices including overbooking by amending legislation properly.
“I will also promote regulation regarding more rigorous controls for the practices of intermediary companies with accessibility to travel through the uncontrolled increase in plane ticket prices, assures Ștefan Mușoiu.
In addition, the social democrat MEP also stated that he “will table amendments to increase flexibility of legislation creating the option for replacing ticket holders’ names. In this sense, he says that he will set a slightly longer term for the change to be operated, however, it will not affect in any way the careful monitoring from the competent authorities.”
