The Commission proposes legislation to:

enable delayed passengers to continue their journeys under good conditions by giving them the right either to reimbursement of the ticket or to an alternative flight at the earliest opportunity;

set minimum requirements for contracts. One aim would be to require airlines to draft contracts, setting out the service offered and conditions applied. The other would be to improve the balance of contracts in favour of passengers;

give passengers the information they need to make choices between airlines by requiring airlines to submit the data necessary for the Commission to publish regular consumer reports;

The Commission will promote the preparation and adoption of voluntary commitments by European airlines covering:

the improvement of service by offering the lowest fares available, allowing reservations to be held for a certain time, informing passengers rapidly of delays, meeting the needs of disabled people and facilitating the lodging of complaints;

adequate care for delayed passengers in order to minimise inconvenience;

simple procedures for lodging complaints and mechanisms for settling disputes out of court. It would also promote voluntary commitments by airports to set quality standards for service and to consider design standards for terminals.

Other initiatives the Commission proposes are:

to discuss how best to strengthen the representation of passengers with member-states and passengers' organisations;

to examine the effects on the market of sales and reservations via the Internet and their conformity with competition rules and the code of conduct for computerised reservation systems;

to study the effects on competition of code-sharing in the context of individual competition proceedings and of tariff co-ordination in interlining

to assess the impact of cabin conditions on passengers' health by setting up expert groups to scrutinise existing research and draw conclusions on risks to health.