Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone has batted for the imposition of stiffer penalties on erring airlines that cause alarm, inconvenience, waste of time to air travelers, and costly loss in airport operations.
Evardone sought the inclusion of his House Bill 3517 in House leadership’s priority list in the wake of the recent Saudia Airlines incident of hijacking “false alarm”.
HB 3517 seeks to raise the fine to P15,000 per violation multiplied by the number of affected passengers.
Evardone noted that while the Civil Aeronautics Board collected over P3.6 million in fines and penalties for delayed flights in the first half of this year alone, airlines’ negligence and indifference still remain.
“The present penalties took effect 39 years ago, in 1978, during the Marcos era. Obviously, they need to be raised as types of error on the part of the airlines are very costly in terms of disrupted air traffic,” he said. (Charissa M. Luci)