CURRENT aviation laws protecting consumers’ rights do not touch on rescheduled flights and must be amended to ensure compensation is given in such situations, Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii said.

The lawmaker, who in the last few days has been raising consumer complaints regarding airlines’ service and difficulty claiming compensation over the recent Hari Raya festive period, today highlighted that existing legislation only touches on flight “delays”.

“The government must review all necessary laws and regulations to ensure it gives the required compensation to the consumers. 

“We may need to amend the law that governs flight ‘delays’ so that it also includes terminologies such as ‘rescheduled’, ‘retimed’ and other legal terminology related to making it mandatory for airlines to provide compensation to passengers.

“Currently, there may be loopholes to the law,” Yii, who is DAP Youth chief, said in a statement.

Yii cited Clause 12 of the Malaysian Aviation Consumer Protection Code, which only states that flight “delays and cancellation” are entitled to compensation.

“The risk here is that airlines companies may get creative with terminologies and use terms such as ‘retimed’ and ‘rescheduled’ that may not be covered under the ambit of the law.

“Also, we must ensure that ‘coverage of more than six hours delay’ does not only apply to those who have bought insurance,” he added.

Social media have been rife with complaints, particularly against AirAsia over flights that were “unreasonably” rescheduled, causing some passengers to be stranded for up to 10 hours. Some flights were also changed after passengers had checked in and some travellers complained they had to buy new sets of tickets multiple times.

AirAsia has issued an apology and an explanation that it only has 45 plans in operation, less than half the 90 it had prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

AirAsia also said that flight changes were caused by a shortage of maintenance, repair and overhaul services in the region, and that a few of its aircraft had sudden technical problems after long periods of idleness during the pandemic.

AirAsia said that to avoid cancelling flights due to these problems, it decided to reschedule them instead.

This prompted more criticism against the airline, including from Yii who yesterday said that AirAsia had misrepresented itself and should not have sold tickets when it knew its shortage of planes would cause delays.

He said Putrajaya should adopt standards like the European Union’s Air Passenger Rights Regulation to better protect the consumers. The EU rules cover compensation and assistance to passengers in the event of denied boarding and of cancellation or long delay of flights. 

“The regulation provides passengers with protection against travel disruption, and also serves as an incentive for the airlines to maintain a more punctual operation,” Yii said, while urging Malaysian aviation regulators to hold airlines’ accountable to their flight schedules.

“Only a certain threshold of reasonable scheduling or delays should be allowed.” – May 12, 2022.