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On April 24, a pilot of China Eastern Airlines resigned and suffered a claim of 12.75 million yuan from the airline. He was finally sentenced by the Kunming Intermediate People’s Court and awarded compensation of more than 1.4 million yuan for training fees of China Eastern Airlines.
The dust of the "sky-high price" claim case that lasted for nearly a year has settled. Regardless of whether the case is related to the "return flight" incident of China Eastern Airlines, it reflects a reality from different aspects: the civil aviation law is seriously lagging behind the development of the aviation industry, just like the problems caused by the "return flight" incident.
In January this year, Li Jiaxiang, former acting director of the General Administration of Civil Aviation and now director of the Civil Aviation Administration, said at the national civil aviation work conference: speed up the revision of the Civil Aviation Law. Relevant experts believe that the revision of the civil aviation law should highlight the people-oriented thinking and strengthen the protection of consumers’ rights and interests and pilots’ rights and interests.
Controversy highlights the lack of
On March 31, China Eastern Airlines’ collective "return flight" occurred. With people’s keen attention, China Eastern Airlines admitted on April 7 that it was caused by "human factors".
Why did the pilot deliberately return? In further questioning, people learned that the pilots vented their dissatisfaction with airlines and used passengers to play games with airlines.
Job-hopping is difficult, labor intensity is high, and the treatment is unfair … Later, the pilots came forward to complain, letting people know that there are so many secrets for pilots with high salary and scenery, and at the same time letting people know that the game between pilots and airlines has a long history: in June 2006, six pilots of a branch of China Eastern Airlines began a five-day "hunger strike" protest at the Shanghai headquarters of China Eastern Airlines because they wanted to leave the company without approval. The "hunger strike" pilot said that he had resigned before and was compensated by the company for the captain’s 6 million yuan and the co-pilot’s 3.07 million yuan according to relevant regulations. On the afternoon of March 14, 2008, more than 40 captains of Shanghai Airlines reported sick leave at the same time because they thought they had been treated unfairly. On March 28th, 2008, 11 captains of East Star Airlines collectively "asked for leave" due to labor disputes with the company …
"An important reason for the above incidents is that neither the aviation law nor the provisions of the former Civil Aviation Administration have clearly defined the mechanism for the rational flow of pilots." Zhang Qihuai, a researcher at the Aviation and Space Law Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, believes that China Eastern Airlines’ collective "return flight" is a "radical" behavior of pilots in order to protect their rights and interests, but they can’t find favorable legal weapons and legal channels.
Zhang Qihuai further analyzed that the large-scale pilots resigned mainly because they were dissatisfied with the internal management mechanism of airlines. There is a lack of an effective relationship communication and conflict resolution mechanism between pilots and airlines. Once there is a conflict, even if the legitimate rights and interests of the pilot are infringed by the airline, the pilot can’t get a "statement" from a proper way, which will inevitably lead to the intensification of contradictions between the two sides.
The problem of delayed passengers’ difficulty in obtaining compensation has always been criticized, and it is also controversial in the handling of this "return flight" incident. It is understood that Article 126 of the Civil Aviation Law stipulates that the carrier shall bear the responsibility for the losses caused by the delay of passengers, luggage or goods in air transportation. It was found that the airline had no excuse for the collective "return flight" incident, and compensation was necessary. How can I compensate? How much is the compensation? There is no provision in the current civil aviation law.
According to "Guiding Opinions on Implementing Economic Compensation for Passengers Due to Flight Delays Caused by Domestic Airlines" issued by the former scaa in July 2004, China Eastern Airlines only compensated each passenger about 400 yuan, thus evading the liability for compensation, which made the delayed passengers very dissatisfied.
Relevant experts said that there are two outstanding issues in the protection of passengers’ rights and interests in the civil aviation law. First, how to deal with flight delays? Besides compensation, how to compensate passengers? The current civil aviation law lacks maneuverability; The other is that in the case of passenger casualties, the amount of compensation is far from the international standard.
The revision faltered
"The legal provisions are too principled and the civil aviation law with poor operability has reached the point where it must be revised." Professor Dong Nianqing, director of the Aviation Law Research Center of China Civil Aviation Management Cadre College, said that the civil aviation law has been implemented for 12 years, and now the environment has changed greatly, and the aviation industry is also developing rapidly. The total turnover of air transport in China ranks second in the world, and the contradiction that the civil aviation law does not meet the actual needs is increasingly prominent.
In fact, in the 12 years since the implementation of the Civil Aviation Law in March 1996, with the new situation and new problems in the development of the aviation industry, the voice of amending the Civil Aviation Law has never stopped.
In 2003, with the end of civil aviation reorganization, China’s entry into WTO and the acceleration of various legal reforms, the legal environment at home and abroad faced by civil aviation has changed. At that time, according to media reports, the relevant departments responded to the appeal of experts and scholars, and launched the revision of the civil aviation law, saying that it was necessary to be in line with the market and the legal system. Since then, there have been reports that "the revised draft has been completed" and "there are more than 100 revisions".
Due to the compensation standard, the Baotou air crash in November 2004 has been heated for a long time. On February 28th, 2006, the former General Administration of Civil Aviation promulgated the Provisions on the Limitation of Liability of Domestic Air Carriers, which stipulated that the limitation of liability of air carriers for each passenger was 400,000 yuan. At the two sessions in 2006, NPC deputies jointly proposed to amend the civil aviation law. Deputies to the National People’s Congress, members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and some legal experts believe that the relevant provisions of the civil aviation law are lagging behind, and the internal management system of civil aviation is not perfect and unified, among which there are many "overlord clauses" for self-protection.
In January 2007, the former General Administration of Civil Aviation publicly stated that the current civil aviation law came into being during the period of the integration of government and enterprise. With the separation of government and enterprise in civil aviation reform, some contents of the law have not met the needs of civil aviation development and the protection of passengers’ rights and interests, and need to be revised urgently. At the same time, it is revealed that the investigation on the revision of the civil aviation law has been initiated.
Today, the revision of the civil aviation law is still "only hearing the sound of stairs, but no one is coming down." Zhang Qihuai said that the revision was not as smooth as expected. The biggest resistance comes from within the civil aviation industry. For the sake of safeguarding the interests of its own departments, civil aviation management departments will naturally not actively formulate relevant regulations to increase their constraints, including passenger compensation and pilot flow.
Highlight people-oriented
It has become a social consensus that the civil aviation law should be amended and urgently amended. In this regard, experts put forward expectations and suggestions for revision.
Zhang Qihuai believes that the revision of the civil aviation law should highlight the people-oriented thinking, strengthen the protection of consumers’ rights and interests and pilots’ rights and interests, and reasonably limit the protection of the industry. He suggested that relevant managers and experts should be organized as soon as possible to step up research on the shortcomings of the current civil aviation law and the new problems in the aviation industry, and formulate a basic aviation law that is in line with international standards and appropriately advanced. At present, the provisions of the civil aviation law, such as compensation standards and flight delay compensation, which lag behind social development, are revised, and provisions such as airport safety management and accident handling procedures are added.
Civil aviation law was formulated in the process of transition from planned economy system to market economy system, which is mainly aimed at industry supervision and has a strong preference for civil aviation enterprises. In this regard, Dong Nianqing said that in the interests of both consumers and carriers, it should be tilted towards the carrier to the consumer. Because the air transport industry is no longer a fragile industry at the beginning, in order to protect the naive civil aviation industry, the law has made some tilt, then, in today’s growing aviation industry, the legal balance should be tilted towards consumers.
At the same time, he pointed out that at present, the legal provisions of some countries in the world (including international conventions) have turned more to safeguarding consumers’ rights and interests.
In view of the fact that international treaties and the basic aviation laws of various countries have direct provisions on the compensation standard and liability limit of air transport, relevant experts suggest that China should also directly and clearly stipulate the liability limit in the civil aviation law, and unify the international and domestic compensation standards based on the principle of "equality before the law". To take a step back, if we consider China’s current level of economic development, we can’t directly stipulate it in the civil aviation law, but we should also authorize the State Council to make specific provisions on compensation standards in the civil aviation law. Instead of authorizing the former CAAC as it is now. It is difficult for CAAC to achieve fairness because it is linked to the interests of airlines and airports.
Experts also suggested that the revision time limit, revision procedure and revision time limit of the liability limit should be clarified. (Reporter Huang Qingchang)
Editor: Liu Haifeng
