OF 4,500 COMPLAINTS last year against Airlines, the Irish Aviation Authority took action in 20 cases, a Dáil committee has heard.

The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA), which is the States regulator for the civilian air sector, was before the Transport Committee today. The representatives from the body were Declan Fitzpatrick and Adrian Corcoran who is Director of Economic Regulation, Consumer Affairs and Licensing.

During the session Sinn Féin TD Louis O’Hara raised the issue of poor behaviour by airlines towards passengers. 

In his questioning O’Hara raised the issue of a constituent who contacted him and accused an airline of “misinforming” the complainant of their rights when a flight was cancelled.  

Fitzpatrick said that IAA dealt with 4,500 complaints last year. 

“The vast, vast majority of those were handled properly and to the satisfaction of the complainant.

“The process does take some time, because we have to gather the information from the person we have to then contact the airline, and this includes airlines outside of Ireland, and then we get their position back, we judge it, we go back and forth. So it does take quite some time,” he said. 

Corcoran explained that the IAA asks passengers to complain to their airline first and that they should only come to the authority after that has run its course. If it is not resolved in six weeks then “they can make the complaint to us”. 

The official said that most of the cases relate to whether passengers are entitled to extra compensation for a disruption and in half of cases it generally goes in favour of the passenger. The investigations are focused on dispute resolutions without the need for taking specific action.

“Once we have exhausted our standard process, we can then issue the airline with the direction and in most scenarios we don’t get to that point. Most cases are resolved before we have to take action,” he added. 

Corcoran said they have had cause to issue 20 directions for the airlines out of the 4,500 complaints. 

O’Hara said that part of the issue for passengers was the length of time it was taking to process complaints. 

Fitzpatrick said that they have worked to quicken the pace of finding resolutions to complaints. 

“We want our process to be as quick as possible. Just over the last two years, we’ve invested in the process quite heavily, we’ve introduced a whole new digital platform that allows the complainant to submit it to us, and then also, more importantly, in the background, what it does as well is it links to the airlines to make sure that we can speed up the interaction with them as well.

“So we are seeing our timelines come down, but it is still a lengthy enough process. It’s not something that you would submit on Monday, and you have an answer by Friday,” Fitzpatrick explained. 

Regional bias

Separately the issue of claimed regional bias and the problem of airlines focusing too many flights in Dublin were also raised by several TDs and senators. 

Michael Murphy, TD, who is chair of the committee, raised the national resilience risk of Dublin Airport being the main location for air travel. He said placing the connectivity to the State through one airport was an unacceptable risk.

Murphy explained that there is a concentration of 84% of flights going through the capital’s sole international airport. He said other jurisdiction such as Portugal has 54% of flights through their “dominant airports” and Heathrow in London is as low as 30%.

Fitzpatrick disputed that the there should be any concern for the amount of flights being focused on Dublin.

“It’s not a specific concern from a safety or security perspective.

“I think when you compare to other European states, I think you need to recognise we are an island. There are different numbers of airports in the different countries that will influence it.

“For example, in Belgium, a lot of people will actually go to Schiphol [In Amsterdam] to get their flights, depending on where it is they want to go, or down to Paris.

“They can do that because there’s a very good rail network to allow them do that. There’s different variables there that will impact the maximum but from a safety and security perspective, there’s no particular issue with that concentration of traffic out of Dublin,” he said.