Ryanair announces €2 levy

Ryanair has announced €2 levy per passenger for all bookings made as of Monday “to fund its costs of flight cancellations, delays and EU261 expenses in force majeure cases where it was not responsible for delays or cancellations”.

Under EU261 regulations, EU airlines are required to reimburse the reasonable receipted expenses of disrupted passengers.

The airline said in a statement that over the past year it suffered costs of more than €100m arising from flight cancellations, delays and providing right to care, compensation and legal expenses as a result of more than 15,000 flight cancellations and over 2.4 million disrupted passengers.

The majority of claims were in three periods during which Ryanair was prevented from flying by the failure or inaction of third parties including:

* the Icelandic volcano airspace closures of April/May 2010,

* the snow closures of many EU airports during November/December 2010,

* over 15 days of national ATC strikes, primarily in Belgium, France, Germany and Spain in summer 2010, which caused repeated flight delays and cancellations.

Ryanair said it believed that the unfair and discriminatory elements of the airline EU261 regulations should be amended to relieve airlines of the burden of providing care in cases where the cancellations and/or delays were clearly not their responsibility or fault.

“It is unfair and discriminatory that airlines are made liable for providing refunds, meals, hotels and phone calls during ATC strikes, bad weather airport closures, or (volcanic) airspace closures when even travel insurance companies avoid liability during these force majeure events, and when competing transport providers (rail, ferries and coach operators) have no such force majeure liability.”

It said that such unfair and discriminatory expenses could not be loaded onto airlines without being passed on to passengers.

Ryanair’s €2 levy would help it to defray these costs, which were not recoverable from governments, ATC providers or airports.

The airline said that if the regulations were reformed to include an effective right of recovery clause and a non discriminatory force majeure clause it will reduce and/or eliminate the levy altogether as its cancellation and delay costs were reduced.