The Civil Aviation Authority is to be given new powers to protect passengers, including the ability to fine airports for poor performance.
The measures have been put forwarded by transport secretary Justine Greening in the draft Civil Aviation Bill, published today.
A new licensing system will be introduced for larger airports, like Heathrow and Gatwick, to allow the CAA to fine airports up to 10% of their annual turnover.
Greening said: "Much of our aviation regulation is governed by 1980s legislation and needs to be updated. This draft Bill offers a package of reforms to make both regulation and the sanctions which support it flexible, proportionate, targeted and effective.
"It proposes removing unnecessary regulation and unnecessary intervention by central government. It devolves more responsibility to the independent specialist regulator, the CAA, while ensuring that the CAA is accountable and weighs the costs and benefits of its decisions."
While responsibility for setting aviation security policy will remain with the transport minister the costs of regulating aviation will be moved from general taxation to the aviation industry, she said.
"In addition the Bill gives the CAA a role in promoting better public information about airline and airport performance and about the environmental effects of aviation and measures taken to mitigate adverse effects."
Greening said it was possible that the Bill would be extended to include the ATOL reforms.
Responding to the publication, Virgin Atlantic said: "Reform is long overdue - the current regulatory regime has failed passengers. Airport charges have been allowed to increase way above the rate of inflation, hitting passenger pockets and completely ignoring the economic climate. Last winter’s snow showed that the performance of airports had not improved at the same rate.
“Regulation must produce better outcomes for our passengers and as the Bill enters Parliament, our focus will be on ensuring that the new framework delivers improvements in practice."
Click here to see the original article by Linsey Mcneill, 24th November 2011
