Ryanair has saved millions of pounds in compensation payouts after quitting an industry-wide arbitration body and leaving travellers with an uphill battle to obtain any redress, according to the consumer group Which? The budget airline cut ties with Aviation ADR, one of two schemes that airlines use to arbitrate serious complaints, at the end of November last year. In the first 11 months of 2018 before Ryanair left the scheme, Aviation ADR received more than 14,000 complaints involving the airline and told it to pay out more than GBP2.6m to passengers, plus an administration fee of GBP75 for each complaint. After Ryanair cut ties with the scheme, only 553 passengers pursued claims through the only other avenue, the Civil Aviation Authority, in the following four months. Which? said this suggested “a huge saving in fees and compensation for Ryanair, which cannot be compelled to pay out even if the aviation regulator finds in a passenger’s favour”. The dispute goes back to earlier in 2018 when Ryanair sought to avoid claims made by passengers under EU regulations after it cancelled a number of flights due to strikes. After the European court of justice ruled that strikes were not an extraordinary circumstance, Aviation ADR started to find in favour of passengers making claims against Ryanair over the walkouts. Which? found that even when Ryanair was with Aviation ADR, some passengers complained of waiting as long as a year to receive compensation.<br/>
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Irish LCC Ryanair’s German pilots have voted in favor of a four-year collective labor agreement (CLA) to cover all Ryanair’s directly employed pilots in Germany until March 2023. Ryanair confirmed 99.3% of pilots voted for the CLA. The agreement, negotiated between Ryanair and the Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) pilot union, will deliver a new pay structure along with a fixed 5/4 roster (work/time-off ratio). Ryanair and VC also agreed on a social plan to govern German base closures or reductions. Using the new pay structure, around 450 pilots will reach higher net salaries. In addition, the share of fixed salaries increased significantly. “With this result in the [past], we continue to work on our ultimate goal, together with the participating unions across Europe to promote a change in corporate culture,” VC lawyer Tanja Viehl said.<br/>
Virgin Australia has received valuable support from regulatory and tourism bodies as it vies with Qantas for new access to Tokyo Haneda Airport. The Japanese government has allocated two additional Haneda slots to Australian carriers as part of a planned capacity expansion at the airport. The slots will be awarded to airlines by Australia’s International Air Services Commission. Qantas has applied for both slots, to operate flights from Melbourne and Sydney to Haneda, while Virgin has requested one slot for a flight from Brisbane. Qantas already serves both of Tokyo’s airports, while Virgin currently has no service to Japan. In a submission to the IASC, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) recommended the airlines receive one slot each. Such an approach “would promote competition to a much greater extent than allocating both frequencies to Qantas,” the ACCC said. The ACCC noted that Virgin serves Japan via codeshares on foreign carriers, so flying the Tokyo route with its own aircraft would make it a much more effective player in this market.<br/>
Air France-KLM Group's low-cost operation Transavia France is rolling out a new reservations feature expanding its route availability by offering passengers to opportunity to book connecting flights. Transavia France says the new facility, known as Smart Connect, will allow passengers to create new city-pair links on a "virtual interlining basis" without having to make separate reservations for each flight. The operator quietly launched a pilot scheme in September on its Spanish, Italian and Portuguese sites and claims that customers showed "strong interest" in the opportunity to book such routes as Porto-Reykjavik and Lisbon-Tunis. After selecting the route the passenger proceeds to reserve the flights through a single payment which combines the ticket costs. Transavia France and Transavia Netherlands will be included in the first iteration of the Smart Connect scheme but other airlines, the company says, will be added before the end of this year. <br/>