Ruling may hit air travel refunds

A court ruling could damage the Commission for Aviation Regulation's (CAR) ability to refund consumers when tour operators collapse, its boss warned yesterday.

Dublin District Court yesterday ordered the commission to pay €1,800 and costs to Webtrade Ltd, which gave the CAR some information on flight bookings with Jetgreen, the tour operator that collapsed in May leaving passengers stranded in Spain.

Before they are licensed, tour operators pay the CAR a bond that is used to compensate consumers who lose out if the company goes out of business.

The commission said in court that it sought the information from Webtrade for this purpose, as Jetgreen did not have adequate records of passengers and bookings.

Webtrade operated the website through which Jetgreen took flight bookings. Its managing director, Mr Jack Donaghy, told the court yesterday that at a meeting in May, the CAR agreed to pay the company for the time it would take to process and format this information for the commission.

Webtrade gave the CAR a number of samples demonstrating the information it held on Jetgreen transactions. Mr Donaghy said he assigned two staff to the job.

However, the Commissioner for Aviation Regulation, Mr Bill Prasifka, who invited Mr Donaghy to the meeting, denied that there was an agreement.

"I made it extremely clear to Mr Donaghy that we could enter into no commercial arrangement with him until it was clear to us that his information was of use to us in discharging our statutory powers," he said.

The CAR said it was entitled to the information under the Package Holidays and Travel Trade Act, 1995. However, the court ruled that it had to pay "a reasonable sum" for the information.

Mr Prasifka argued that if the CAR had to pay every organisation from which it sought information following a tour operator's collapse, this would have to come from the bonds set aside to compensate consumers.

"It would put us in a position of spending money in circumstances where we have no idea if it will benefit the people that we are here to protect," he said.

Jetgreen began selling flights to Spain in April. It launched in May. The company claimed to be an airline, but held a tour operator's licence, as an Iceland Air subsidiary actually operated the flights on its behalf. It is not in liquidation and owes Webtrade €60,000.