TV interview on the Today Show with Channel Nine

JAYNE AZZOPARDI: Airlines may soon have to cough up for flight delays and cancellations and compensate customers for their inconvenience. Federal politics reporter Liz Daniels has those details. Liz, you’ve just spoken to Transport Minister Catherine King. 

LIZ DANIELS: That’s right, Jayne. The Federal Government wants to set up a new cop on the beat that would have the powers to force airlines to refund passengers for unreasonably delayed or cancelled flights, a white paper being handed down this morning by Infrastructure and Transport Minister Catherine King, and she joined me in the Canberra studio a short time ago.

[Excerpt]

CATHERINE KING: This Ombuds Scheme, it operates– will operate in a similar way to the telecommunications ombuds scheme and trying to also not just have complaints, but also see that improvement over time, because there will be reporting of how many complaints are being received, what sort of complaints, what the remedies are. It will be legislated and it will have penalties and enforcement as well in that legislation.

LIZ DANIELS: In terms of what is deemed an unreasonable delay, what will be the framework around what is unreasonable and what is potentially just caused by factors out of the airline’s control, like weather?

CATHERINE KING: Well, one of the things that we’re also introducing as part of this scheme is that airlines and airports will have to “show cause”, so show the reason for the delay. And so, for example, I was delayed last night and all of the screens had– it was pretty obvious there was a massive storm in Melbourne last night, and it was pretty obvious that the airport got shut– but they have to actually show what that cause is and report on that cause.

LIZ DANIELS: Rod Sims, the former ACCC chairman, has been very vocal about the duopoly in terms of the domestic market. What in the white paper addresses that competition or lack thereof competition?

CATHERINE KING: So we already announced back in February really significant reforms to the slots at Sydney Airport. And that’s one of the constraints that is on the system. It’s a curfewed airport, it is a constrained airport, so it has a demand management scheme in place. And there’s also been talk about whether certain airlines are hoarding slots or not. So, what we’ve done there is a couple of things. One, we’ve introduced a recovery hour, so you can increase from 80 up to 85 when there’s been a weather event or an extreme event– in the case we saw recently with the Microsoft outage– that put airlines and airports out for quite a while as well.

[End of excerpt]

LIZ DANIELS: Jayne, the full details of the reforms are being handed down in a couple of hours, and we’ll bring you the updates throughout the day.

JAYNE AZZOPARDI: Okay, Liz. Thank you.