Air travelers need strong European consumer protections, in the U.S. too

A popular European consumer protection rule may have survived Europe’s airline lobby, but the airlines will come at the rule again.

Mila Schoun knew what his downgrade was worth, but his airline pretended it didn’t.

Schoun, a senior manufacturing engineer from Pompano Beach, Fla., recently flew from Prague to Miami with his wife. The couple had paid Swiss International Airlines for premium economy seats, but then the airline changed aircraft and downgraded them to the regular cabin for the 10-hour flight across the Atlantic.

Schoun asked the airline to refund the difference between regular economy and premium economy. Swiss refused.

But a 21-year-old European law called EC 261 protected Schoun. And that law said Swiss had to pay him for the downgrade, which it did, after I pointed out the requirement.

EC 261 has your back

If you’ve flown to or from Europe, EC 261 has your back, even if you’ve never heard of it. The regulation, on the books since 2004, requires an airline to pay cash when it cancels your flight, bumps you or strands you for more than three hours. The amount runs from 250 to 600 euros, roughly $290 to $700, depending on distance.

Get downgraded, like Schoun, and you’re owed a partial refund.

The rule benefits American air travelers too, because it covers any flight leaving an EU airport, including ones operated by U.S. carriers. Millions of Americans cross the Atlantic every year. Most are protected and have no idea.

EU passengers today are 70 percent less likely to face delays exceeding three hours and 20 percent less likely to face same-day cancellations than travelers in the United States, according to Tomasz Pawliszyn, president of the Association of Passenger Rights Advocates.

“It’s a framework that successfully prevents an estimated 8,400 hours of flight delays every year,” he adds.

The European consumer protection regulations are the strongest passenger-rights laws on the planet, and they are the rules the airlines hate the most. Any surprise that airlines are trying to eliminate them?

Come on Brussels, you can do better

So here’s my proposal for Brussels, now that everyone’s congratulating themselves for not making things worse.

Don’t stop at “not worse.” Make it better.

Raise the amounts to match inflation, then index them so this never happens again. Tie the payouts to a price level the way pensions and minimum wages already are, so a delay in 2046 is worth what a delay is worth today.

And while you’re at it, the United States should take notes, because we already wrote the outline and then threw it away.

We had it, then we didn’t

In December 2024, the U.S. Department of Transportation proposed its own version of EC 261. An airline that delayed your domestic flight three hours or more, through its own fault, would have owed you cash, starting around $200 and climbing to $775 for the worst delays, plus meals and a hotel if it stranded you overnight. It was the closest America has ever come to a real passenger protection law.

That lasted about a year. This past fall, the DOT withdrew the proposal, calling it an unnecessary regulatory burden and saying airlines should compete on the compensation they offer rather than be required to offer any.

Schoun got his money because a two-decade-old law still had just enough teeth. The question for Brussels, and for Washington, is whether we keep those teeth sharp or let them wear down to nothing.

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