Russian air passengers risk losing most of their remaining guarantees for carrying hand luggage. The Russian Ministry of Transport has published a draft order that threatens to deprive them of the right to unconditional free transportation of briefcases and handbags, outerwear, garment bags, Duty Free purchases, as well as medicines, crutches, baby food and cradles, baby carriages and wheelchairs, canes and other items necessary for medical reasons, reports our own correspondent for Travel.ru.
Formally, the draft order retains this entire list in the Federal Aviation Rules (FAR-82), but proposes to remove clause 135 from the FAR, which contains a provision that all these items are carried in excess of the normal carry-on baggage allowance and without charging a fee. The text of the draft only prohibits taking such items into account when calculating the total weight of carry-on baggage, but does not guarantee their carriage in the aircraft cabin, much less free carriage. All this is left to the discretion of the airline (the FAR applies to flights by any Russian airline).
The emergence of this wild project becomes clear if we recall the article published a week ago in Vedomosti. It reports that the airline Pobeda (a subsidiary of Aeroflot) demanded the abolition of free transportation of all these items in a letter dated July 11 to the new Minister of Transport Yevgeny Ditrikh. These demands in the same article were supported by one of the members of the so-called "public council" of Aeroflot. And already on July 30, a draft order of the Ministry of Transport appeared, in which these demands of Pobeda were fully satisfied - apparently without the slightest attempt to consult with other interested parties, primarily air passengers.
Pobeda needed another rewrite of the legislation to suit its needs right now, probably because in the spring the carrier predictably lost a case in court that considered Pobeda’s refusal to transport all these items in excess of the usual carry-on baggage allowance for free. As reported in the same article, the Shcherbinsky Court of Moscow ordered the airline to comply with the current FAP and transport briefcases, handbags, outerwear and items required for medical reasons for free. Nevertheless, Pobeda continues to challenge all of this in subsequent courts, while continuing to ignore the FAP and denying all of its passengers the free carriage of these items. Having virtually no chance in court, Pobeda apparently decided to rewrite the law itself with the help of the Ministry of Transport.
Something similar happened last year. Then Aeroflot, by its own admission, lobbied in the interests of Pobeda for the previous changes to the FAP, after which passengers lost the guarantees of free transportation of laptops, cameras, video cameras, umbrellas, the press and a number of other items. At the same time, the right to free transportation of at least 10 kilograms was also cancelled - instead, a mocking rule appeared about only 5 kilograms of carry-on baggage. The Ministry of Transport was not stopped even by 98% negative reviews of that project. Now Pobeda has decided to build on its success and deprive passengers of almost all remaining guarantees regarding carry-on baggage.
It is worth paying tribute to the skill of those who drafted the order. Since the list of free items was still there, almost no one noticed that in reality the draft proposes to cancel this freebie. Almost all media outlets and bloggers who covered this news fell for this trick. Most of the headlines are striking in their absurdity - right down to absurd texts like "Passengers will be allowed not to weigh briefcases" (as if they are currently allowed to be weighed) or "Ladies' handbags will be excluded from carry-on luggage" (as if they are currently counted).
However, what is even more striking is the willingness of the state regulator to blindly comply with the demands of a single airline without the slightest regard for the rights of passengers, whose interests the Ministry of Transport must defend and on whose taxes it is supposed to operate. Among the officially declared tasks of the ministry there is nothing about assisting Pobeda Airlines, but there are provisions on “ensuring the availability of transport services for the disabled”, “improving legislation aimed at increasing the availability of transport services for the population” and “increasing the responsibility of air carriers to passengers”. In practice, as we can see, the Ministry of Transport is going to deprive disabled people of the guarantees of free carriage of strollers, crutches, canes, rollators and other things, and all other passengers of the guarantees of carriage of handbags, briefcases, goods from Duty Free stores and outerwear. All this leads to an actual increase in the price of air travel due to the likely payment for the carriage of all these items, and, consequently, to a decrease in the availability of transport services for the population in general and disabled people in particular. A side effect will be a blow to the economy of Russian airports due to the fee for transporting goods from Duty Free shops and, accordingly, a sharp drop in their sales.
Unfortunately, no government agency or public organization in Russia is engaged in real systematic protection of passengers' rights. Therefore, we can expect that Pobeda will be able to fully or partially implement this wild project. Alternatively, it is possible that after the general indignation, the Ministry of Transport will "graciously" return to the order the guarantees of free transportation of wheelchairs, crutches, baby food, medicines, canes and other medically necessary items, but will leave briefcases, handbags, mini-backpacks, Duty Free goods, garment bags and outerwear outside the free list. It is possible that this is exactly the outcome that Pobeda is counting on.
Source: travel.ru