APRA Report Relies on Flawed Comparators and Ignores Long-Term Delay Trends

By Thomas Reynaert, IATA Senior Vice President, External Affairs

At IATA’s recent ‘Wings of Change Europe’ conference in Brussels, IATA Director General Willie Walsh explained that what passengers are really looking for from the EU261 air passenger rights regulation is to travel with the lowest possible fare, arrive on time, and have the choice whether or not to add any items. And he argued that policy decisions on EU261 appear to be anecdotally driven, not data-driven.

A recent paper regarding EU261, from the Association of Passenger Rights Activists (APRA), a coalition of airline compensation claims companies, attempts to introduce some data in the debate, but it is a deeply flawed analysis. It relies on unrealistic assumptions to come up with figures that contradict the European Commission’s own data and utilizes a flawed comparison with the US to imply success where none exists.

We firmly reject the conclusions of their paper, and below we deconstruct the myths in APRA’s analysis.

1. The Cost Myth: Refuting the €1.73 Figure with Commission Data

APRA’s claim that EU261 compliance costs are merely "€1.73 per passenger" creates a dangerous illusion of affordability. This is directly contradicted by the European Commission’s own Impact Assessment conducted by Steer.

• The Real Cost: The Steer study confirms that compliance costs are significantly higher—estimated at over €4.40 per passenger as of 2018—and rising annually. Indeed, the Impact Assessment accompanying the Commission’s 2023 proposals forecast that EU261 costs to airlines would reach €8 billion by 2025, working out at €8 for each of the 1 billion passengers enjoying the connectivity benefits of the Single Aviation Market.
• The "Iceberg" Effect: The APRA figure ignores the massive financial burden of "care and assistance" (hotels, transport during external disruptions like ATC strikes) and the administrative overhead of claims processing. For regional carriers, where average fares are low, a single compensation payout can exceed 500% of the ticket revenue, a disproportionate penalty that threatens connectivity.

2. The Efficacy Myth: Delays Have Increased, Not Decreased

APRA claims EU261 has "substantially reduced delays." However, long-term data paints a different picture. If the regulation were the primary driver of punctuality, we would see a consistent downward trend in disruptions since 2004. We do not.

• Regulation Cannot Fix Capacity: Since the introduction of EU261, average delay minutes per flight in Europe have fluctuated based on traffic volume and ATC capacity, not regulation. Again, the Steer study contradicts the APRA paper, showing that delays and disruption increased, even following the Sturgeon ruling by the Court of Justice which established the right to compensation due to long delays.
• The Upward Trend: Contrary to APRA’s narrative, Eurocontrol data indicates that delays have trended upwards in recent years due to airspace fragmentation and capacity crunches. Penalizing airlines for these systemic infrastructure failures has failed to improve the situation, proving that EU261 is a tax on operations, not a fix for punctuality.

3. The Comparator Fallacy: Why the US Comparison fails

The APRA paper attributes better EU performance solely to regulation by comparing it to the US. Comparing Europe to the US is invalid due to differences in weather (severe convective storms/blizzards in US hubs), and Air Traffic Management among other factors.

4. Operational Reality

APRA argues that EU261 "encourages flights to operate." In reality, it distorts decision-making.

• The Cliff-Edge: The rigid 3-hour threshold forces operations centers to prioritize flights nearing the penalty cutoff over flights that are already delayed, purely to mitigate financial damage rather than optimize passenger convenience.
• Intrinsic Motivation: Airlines do not need to be threatened to run on time. A grounded plane earns zero revenue. The industry is already hyper-motivated to fly; EU261 simply drains the resources needed to invest in resilience.

Conclusion

Despite its name, APRA is not in fact representative of the actual traveling public. It is an organization representing businesses that make money on the back of systemic challenges and failures in the European aviation system, many of which – notably air traffic control delays – are out of the control of airlines. These claim farms are symptomatic of the problems with EU261. They take a cut from the money that goes to the 1% of travelers who are severely impacted by delays/cancellation and eligible for compensation under 261. Their motivation is not to improve the performance of the European aviation system but to increase the amount of compensation paid out. Moreover, unlike legal firms and other entities that provide advice to passengers and handle money on their behalf, claim farms are completely unregulated, a gap that the European institutions have so far failed to address.  

What EU policymaking needs is to be based on accurate data, and reform of EU261 must be based on the operational reality and robust analysis shown in the Steer study, not the selective modeling of the APRA paper. We urge policymakers to recognize that punitive regulation and extracting money from airlines has not solved the delay crisis—only infrastructure investment and Single European Sky reform can do that.

> Read the Steer study

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