The National Authority for the Protection of Consumer Rights (ANPC) has imposed sanctions of more than 10 million lei on Blue Air for canceled flights from June 15, 2022 until now, the agency said in a statement.

“Given the situation created on the market by the commercial behavior of the economic operator Blue Air Aviation SA and its continuation, the National Authority for the Protection of Consumer Rights (ANPC) carried out a large-scale control action, which took into account the way of compliance with legal norms. provisions in the field of consumer rights protection regarding the operator’s air transportation services, first checking the situation regarding canceled flights in the period from 15.06.2022 to 30.08.2022 and the offers made by the economic operator both on the official website www.flyblueair.com and on its official page on Facebook or from the Blue Air application, and later extended in connection with the appearance in the public space of information regarding the cancellation of all flights from 09/06/2022 to 10/10/2022. Despite the cumbersome conduct of the investigation, caused by the late responses of the business entity to the requests of the ANPC authorized group regarding various documents necessary for the investigation, the conclusions of the analysis of the situation have been completed,” the ANPC press service reports. This is reported by Agerpres.

Thus, the control group established the use of unscrupulous economic activity by the business entity on a large scale. Taking into account the provisions of Art. 3 point 3 of Regulation (EU) No. 2017/2394 of the European Parliament and of the Council dated 12.12.2017, this means any action or inaction that is contrary to legislation protecting the interests of consumers and that has caused, is causing or may cause damage to the collective interests of consumers residing in at least two states- to members other than the state in which the relevant actions or omissions occurred or took place, or in whose territory the trader responsible for the relevant actions or omissions is located, the cited source notes.

“Here is Blue Air making its last flight and leaving the market, as we said three months ago. From the last sanction to this second assessment, more than 100,000 consumers have gone through what the first ones went through in the past two years. Where their money went, what it was spent on and how it will be returned remains a big mystery. One of the company’s planes is lying on the runway at Baneas airport without both engines. I wonder how many races he would have had to do considering he couldn’t even travel on the DN1 without fuel. With no fuel, no airport fees paid, no wages paid to date, I still wonder how the races were run and why they were promoted when it was known they couldn’t be completed. I’m not talking about the fact that without airplanes everything would be even more difficult. Do they have all these things or not? It is interesting because the company representatives did not want to answer us. I publicly state that I will take a polygraph test on the following aspects: If a company representative has told us that he is considering exiting the market in the fall, if he has told us that they will no longer have aircraft with which to complete the race. Considering how much money is missing from consumers’ pockets, the fines that our authority imposes seem to me to be extremely small. I apologize to every victim for the past years, when everything could have been more strictly sanctioned,” said Horia Constantinescu, president of the ANPC.

150,227 consumers from 23 EU countries were affected / Losses over 19.5 million euros

The conclusions of the investigations carried out by the ANPC authorities showed that the economic operator Blue Air Aviation SA did not offer commitments or a plan of compensation measures for consumers within the deadline set by the competent authorities. During the analyzed period, namely from June 15 to September 12, 2022, 150,227 consumers from 23 member states of the European Union were affected, and the business entity’s practice was repeated.

The cost of damages caused to consumers exceeds the amount of EUR 19.582 million (equivalent calculated at the exchange rate of September 16), respectively more than 96.447 million lei (equivalent calculated at the exchange rate of September 16, 2022), for the period analyzed and reflects only the cost of purchased tickets, in reality the loss is much greater.

At the same time, actual refunds for canceled flights were made to a very small number of passengers who were actually refunded, correspondingly 598 bookings were refunded (representing 0.7% of the total number of 80,826 canceled bookings), the total amount of actual refunds equivalent to 115,016.11 euros (0.6% of the total amount of canceled reservations). A percentage of 9.8% of the total amount to be refunded, i.e. an amount of approximately 1.925 million euros was refunded in the wallet (e-wallet), which is 10,685 refunds.

“Following these findings, the ANPC Commissioners Team decided to impose 2 infringement fines, one in the amount of EUR 2,000,000, equivalent in lei at the exchange rate of 4.10.2022, for large-scale impact on consumers at the level of the European Union, and another in the amount of 200,000 lei for repeat violation. The total amount of fines is 10,094,200 lei,” the press release states.

Additional sanctions were also applied, respectively: taking protective measures; a measure is proposed to stop unfair commercial practices in the sense of stopping placing on the market offers of flights available to consumers that are misleading, for the implementation of which the business entity does not have the necessary resources; it is proposed to suspend the provision of services until the termination of incorrect business practices or until the implementation of the prescribed measures.

On September 6, Blue Air first announced the suspension of all scheduled flights until September 12, leading to the seizure of all company accounts by the Ministry of the Environment.

Although a day later, on September 7, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it had decided to suspend the seizure of Blue Air Aviation’s cash and set a 12-month schedule for paying the debt, the low-cost carrier announced that it would resume the seizure. flights only from October 10, noting that it does not have the necessary funds to pay for fuel and other operating expenses necessary for the flights scheduled from September 12.

Later, in late September, the budget airline operator announced that it would not resume flights from October 10 and was in talks with potential investors, creditors and the Romanian government to restructure its capital.

Read on this topic:

• How Blue Air accounts were seized, leading to chaos at several airports / Timeline of events
• How can Blue Air passengers get their money back? The company says reimbursement depends on two “critical factors”
• Blue Air says it will not resume flights even from October 10, as promised

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