European budget airline Ryanair has taken a novel approach to compensating passengers for delays and cancellations - it's going to charge them.
The airline announced yesterday that it would impose a £2 ($A3.11) levy on all passengers in order to provide compensation for those passengers who face delays and cancellations, UK papers report. The fee will be €2 for passengers outside the UK.
The 'compensation levy', it says, is due to Europe's regulation EU261, which states that passengers are entitled to compensation, including food and accommodation, if their flight is delayed or cancelled.
Ryanair is pushing for airlines to be exempted from the regulation for events that are beyond the airline's control - such as extreme weather events like the snow storm that recently crippled airports across Europe or last year's volcano eruption in Iceland that grounded flights.
The airline said that over the past year it has suffered costs of over 100 million euro arising from flight cancellations, delays and providing right to care, compensation and legal expenses arising from more than 15,000 flight cancellations and over 2.4 million disrupted passengers
In a statement, the airline repeated called the regulation "unfair and discriminatory", claiming it had been forced to pass the costs on to customers.
"While we regret the imposition of this £2 EU261 levy, the extraordinary costs which have been imposed on us by delays and cancellations under these discriminatory regulations must be recovered from passengers," Ryanair's Stephen McNamara said.
Critics say the airline is simply looking for an excuse to increase its ticket prices in the wake of soaring fuel costs.
Ryanair is renowned for finding innovative ways of charging additional fees on its air fares. Earlier this year a Spanish court ruled that the airline's policy of charging passengers €40 ($A54) to print their boarding passes was illegal. Ryanair wanted passengers to print out their own boarding passes at home.
- theage.com.au
Follow Traveller on Twitter @FairfaxTravel
