The full European Parliament approved this Wednesday a non-binding resolution demanding that objective conditions be set to facilitate boarding of hand luggage on a passenger plane to be free of charge. A recommendation that European Comission should take into account in its reform process of the 2008 regulation that regulates air services. The substance of the matter was already clarified from a ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 2014 in which it was ruled that hand luggage was an “indispensable item” that could not be subject to price supplements as long as it was within “reasonable” measurements. For this reason, the Spanish Ministry of Consumer Affairs already processed disciplinary proceedings this summer, still in progress, against several airlines. What was not at all fixed was what can be considered hand luggage. Something that should have been done, if not in the wording of the regulations in force for 15 years, then after the ruling nine years ago. This unresolved ambiguity is what has made it easier for airlines to argue that, based on certain measurements, a piece may not be considered hand luggage, and therefore susceptible to being checked in and charged or not depending on the regulations of each company or the capacity limitations of the cabins at any given time.
It is a situation that accumulates complaints and that leaves passengers in uncomfortable and sometimes unpredictable situations, especially when connections must be made with companies that maintain different rules of the game. An inconsistency that in some cases has been used by companies to reasonably limit travelers’ desire to board with unacceptable volumes of luggage and thus save the cost of checking in (one of the elements that companies use to offset their costs). increasing exploitation rates) and, in others, to ignore in practice the gratuity recognized in the court ruling. After at least nine years of delay, the Commission should not make it wait even longer for compliance with what Parliament has demanded and set minimum required standard dimensions to free hand luggage.
The Chamber also demands that services such as seat selection cannot be charged separately. groups with minors or elderly requiring assistance, and that the extra charges appear upfront in prices visible to buyers. These positions can be part of the legitimate commercial strategy of each company, in a competitive process that has favored the lowering of air transport prices (which, if it should be subject to any external restrictions, will be due to environmental imperatives, not due to anti-competitive regulatory practices). And it is true that the manual purchasing processes on airline websites are usually transparent, in general, about the additional prices of each service. But in a market largely dominated by search engines and flight comparators, segregate basic aspects as additional charges that other companies incorporate into the base rate, to present these search engines with the lowest possible price and gain visibility, is today an exercise in lack of transparency for the consumer as questionable as, in other times, the fine print was.