The federal government is moving ahead with legislation that would reshape how air travellers are protected when flights are delayed, cancelled or handled poorly. The package comes after years of frustration over refunds, disrupted trips and slow complaint handling, particularly in the wake of the Covid travel chaos and follows pressure from regulators and consumer advocates for tougher rules on how airlines treat their customers.
Under the plan, an independent aviation consumer ombudsman would sit alongside a new aviation consumer protection authority and an industry charter, creating a more formal framework for handling disputes. The competition regulator has argued that mandatory compensation for disrupted passengers, similar to models used in Europe and Canada, might ultimately resolve complaints more efficiently than case-by-case ombudsman decisions. A major consumer organisation backs both automatic compensation and the new independent complaints avenue as a meaningful step forward. Airlines, however, oppose mandatory payouts and say additional agencies, overlapping responsibilities and compliance duties will increase their costs at a time when they are already managing higher expenses and they stress that many of the promised protections, such as support during delays, better baggage handling, privacy safeguards and clearer customer service, are already written into their own customer charters.
The bigger debate now centres on how broad these protections should be and who they should cover. Airline groups argue that leaving travel agents outside the framework creates a major gap, as these intermediaries handle around 90% of corporate trips and roughly 70% of international bookings, and they warn that adding a new regulator and an ombudsman on top of existing competition and consumer rules looks likely to create duplication rather than clarity. The government frames the legislation as a first step toward a fairer, more reliable aviation market. It points to recent data showing about one in five domestic flights still depart late but it remains to be seen whether the final system will deliver smoother journeys for passengers without pushing ticket prices higher or creating the kind of bureaucracy that both industry and consumers ultimately find frustrating.
