Passenger Rights

The events of American Airlines flight 1348 late December (when in bad weather passengers were kept in the aircraft on the ground for 9 hours) has led to a renewed call for improved passenger rights. A glance at the blog of Coalition for Stranded Airline Passenger's Bill of Rights suggests they are asking for more rights than those provided to passengers of EU airlines under their regulations.

Update on the UK Air Passenger Duty (APD) tax rise

I earlier posted about the doubling of UK's Air Passenger Duty (APD) tax effective 1 February 2007, and the retrospectivity of it. The airlines have now had time to consider how they will deal with the practical problem of payment of the higher taxes for those who had already ticketed when the increase was announced for flights on or after 1 February 2007.

The BBC reports on the decisions of some UK airlines:

• Ryanair has advised passengers must pay the increase by the day before departure - there will be no facility to pay at the airport and they won't bear the cost (booo)
• Jet2 will just take the money off passenger's credit cards (wonder how many disputed payments the credit card companies will get from that nastiness?)
• British Airways has advised they will bear the cost and not attempt to collect it (presumably the costs of collection are excessive and besides this is a chance for some good PR after a string of recent bad publicity)
• Easyjet didn't advise what they intend doing - I hope they make up their mind soon!

With such diverging approaches, one thing we can count on is confusion and chaos at the UK airports come 1 February. It is not yet too late for the UK government to stop the nonsense by removing the retrospectivity of the tax increase.

Happy New Year, and more website dumbing down

Apologies for the lack of posts. I have been busier than I'd anticipated, and also had more time away from the internet (mostly travel-related).

But I'm back - happy New Year everyone.

For those readers who have been using the T and T availability tool (ie expert mode) will have noticed they have joined the increasing number of websites in dumbing down and removing functionality. Help is at hand. Flyer Talker SchmutzigMSP has provided a replacement at http://availability.publicbackup.com. Thanks SchmutzigMSP, boo to T and T.