The Airline Passenger Experience Association (APEX) is demanding extensive US government passenger compensation following the grounding of all US flights for nearly three hours last week for the first time since 9/11, due to a Federal Aviation Administration outage traced to a database failure.
The technical failure caused over 10 000 flight delays and over 1 300 flight cancellations, with millions of passengers around the country affected and over US$200m (R3,41bn) of economic damage, as estimated by APEX.
APEX is calling on US Department of Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, to hold the government to the same level of accountability that he had demanded from airlines the day prior to the FAA failure. Secretary Buttigieg had stated on Twitter: "We will enforce their responsibility to refund flight tickets and reimburse for alternate and ground transport, baggage costs, meals and hotels."
“With a programme for similar government accountability for flight delays, funds could be reimbursed to customers from the billions of tax dollars charged to passengers,” said APEX CEO, Dr Joe Leader.
"Air traffic control failures happen too often. This national failure highlights a need for the US government to redirect airline taxes to practise what they preach: protect customers when it's your fault within your control.”
APEX points to the FAA system failure as further underlining the need for further air traffic control modernisation. In addition to further protecting passengers from failures, US government research has indicated that a Next Generation Air Transportation System could reduce airline fuel utilisation by up to 5% through more fuel-efficient traffic management. The update could save billions of dollars annually paid by airlines and their passengers in more efficient travel, APEX states.
