Lisbon, Aug. 19, 2024 (Lusa) - Air passengers' rights are not being respected at Madeira airport, where strong winds have forced flights to be cancelled since the weekend, Portugal's consumer watchdog, DECO, warned on Monday.

Speaking to Lusa, Paulo Fonseca, leader of the Legal and Economic Department of DECO (the Portuguese association for consumer protection), stressed that the authorities at Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport in Funchal are not providing adequate information to passengers affected by the adverse weather conditions on the island, which have resulted in multiple flight cancellations and delays.

Already today, two flights from Lisbon were cancelled, at 00:15 and 01:10, both operated by TAP.

Having checked the official Madeira airport website, the flight that was due to leave Porto for Funchal at 17:30, also operated by TAP, has already been cancelled.

So far, DECO has not received any formal complaints, but there have been "several" telephone contacts with requests for clarification, either from the association's regional office in Madeira or via online tools.

Pointing out that the rights of air passengers are not suspended by exceptional circumstances, such as adverse weather conditions, Paulo Fonseca stressed that ‘the consumer has the right to information, to be informed, effectively, [about] whether there is a delay, whether there is a cancellation and this information has to be given in good time’.

At the same time, ‘the consumer who has a cancellation or delay, regardless of whether [...] the rerouting takes place immediately or not, has the right to assistance,’ the lawyer added.

This assistance - he specified - includes ‘meals and refreshments, free of charge, for the proportional waiting time until the re-routing actually takes place’.

Food assistance is due ‘whether the airline is responsible for the situation or not’, in other words, in a situation of ‘winds and storms, cataclysms, the consumer always retains this right’, he explained.

Similarly, the passenger ‘retains the right to accommodation if they have to stay overnight at the airport’.

This is where ‘the big problems begin’ at Madeira airport, where the cancelled flight will often only be guaranteed ‘a few days later’, said Paulo Fonseca.

According to DECO, passengers "don't get any information from the airline", which is responsible for providing accommodation, which is "free of charge for the period necessary for the next flight to take place".

In the absence of this information, DECO advises consumers to look for accommodation and keep all invoices (including transport to and from the airport, as well as meals) in order to request reimbursement later.

Paulo Fonseca emphasised that this situation is not ‘extraordinary’ at Madeira airport and that DECO has already alerted the regional government to similar circumstances in the past.

‘Consumers often end up staying overnight at the airport itself, they don't have any information, the counters are closed, [...] they are conditioned to electronic forms and often [...] the pages are overloaded,’ he said.

At the same time, he added, ‘consumers are unable to make a complaint’ and ‘there are no support mechanisms’ to help them, mechanisms that ‘have to be available and have to be activated immediately’.

DECO points out that it has regularly alerted the government and the Parliament, as well as the regional authorities in Madeira, ‘to the need to create contingency plans’ at airports in order to ‘ensure that consumers, whenever there are situations that cause mass flight cancellations or considerable delays [...], are not harmed and can immediately have the right to assistance’.

 The island of Madeira is the only area in the country to be under an orange warning for hot weather until 6pm today (on the island of Porto Santo there is a yellow warning), the second level on the scale, issued by the Portuguese national meteorological institute - IPMA when there is a meteorological situation of moderate to high risk.

The wind has also been making it difficult to fight the rural fire that broke out on Wednesday in the mountains of Ribeira Brava, spreading the following day to the neighbouring district of Câmara de Lobos and, over the weekend, to the municipality of Ponta do Sol, through Paul da Serra.

SBR/AYLS // AYLS

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