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U.S. Department of 

Transportation 

OffiCe ot the Secretary 

o11loosport01ien 

GENERAl COUNSEL 

AprillS, 2009 

1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE 

Woshinglon, DC 20590 

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Certified Mail- Return Receipt Requested ~ 

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Evelyn D. Sahr and Jennifer L. Andrews 

Counsel for Olympic Airlines SA 

Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC 

1747 Pennsylvania Avenue, N. W. 

Suite 1200 

Washington, D.C. 20006 

Dear Ms. Sahr and Ms. Andrews: 

Re: Conflict of Law Waiver Request 

Concerning Provisions in Subpart G of 14 CFR 

Part 382 

This letter concerns Olympic Airlines SA's {Olympic) September 10, 2008, request for a conflict 

of law waiver concerning the boarding, deplaning, and connecting assistance requirements 

contained in Subpart G of 14 CFR Part 382 (14 CFR 382.91 - 14 CFR 382.105) of the 

Department's Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA) regulation. Olympic's request for a conflict of 

law waiver concerning various other provisions of 14 CFR Part 382 (Part 382) is still under 

review by the Department. 

Olympic asserts a conflict of law between sections 382.91, 382.95, 382.101, 382.103, and, 

382.105 and Articles 7.1, 7.5, 7.6 and 8.1, as well as Annex I & II of EC 1107/2006, the 

European Union regulation on service to passengers with disabilities. The cited provisions of EC 

1107 require the airport managing body {airport operator) to provide assistance to a person with 

reduced mobility (PRM) in boarding and deplaning a flight, as well as transiting the airport. 

Under sections 382.91, 382.95, 382.101, 382.103, and 382.105, carriers, not airport operators, 

are responsible for providing or ensuring boarding, deplaning, and connecting assistance. 

We note that Part 382 does not prohibit Olympic from relying on the relevant services provided 

by an airport operator, so long as those services meet the requirements in Subpart G of Part 382. 

When those services do not meet the requirements of Subpart G, however, section 382.105 of our 

rule requires Olympic to provide supplemental services to ensure that these requirements are 
met. 1 In other words, to ensure compliance with Part 382, the service must be supplemented 

when necessary to the extent required by the rule (e.g., a carrier is bound to provide or ensure 

prompt enplaning and deplaning assistance, including to a passenger who does not provide 

advance notice and requests assistance to make a connection to another flight). Article 9.4 ofEC 

I 107 explicitly permits agreements between carriers and airport operators in which the airport 

operator will provide a higher standard of service or supplemental services to the carrier's 

passengers at that airport. Moreover, we are not aware of any provision in EC 1107 that bars a 

carrier from directly supplementing services. 

In the Section-by-Section Analysis of the conflict of laws provision in the preamble to the final 

rule (73 Fed. Reg. at 27646), and at section 382.9, we stated that a foreign law that requires a 

foreign carrier to do something prohibited by this rule, or that prohibits a foreign carrier from 

doing something required by this rule, is an appropriate subject for a conflict of laws waiver. 

This is not the case with respect to the cited provisions of EC 1107 and the requirements of 

sections 382.91, 382.95, 382.101, 382.103, and 382.105. The relevant provisions of both Part 

382 and EC 1107 complement one another and allow for ample flexibility to achieve 

simultaneous compliance with the requirements of both regulations. Absent a showing of a 

generally applicable legal bar in EC 1107 to providing supplementary services as needed to meet 

the requirements in Subpart G of Part 382, a carrier would necessarily have to make an airportby-airport showing that it was precluded from providing supplementary services. Olympic does 

not provide any information demonstrating that it is precluded from providing supplementary 

services at any particular airport or airports from which it conducts operations covered by Part 

382. Therefore, having found no conflict oflaw, the Department must deny Olympic's conflict 

of law waiver request for sections 382.91, 382.95, 382.101, 382.103, and 382.105. 

1 The preamble to 14 CFR Part 382 provides further clarification of the Department's intent: 

(T]he final rule should not be understood to require carriers to duplicate the acconunodations 

made by airport operators at foreign airports. Where foreign airport operators provide accessibility 

services or accessible facilities, foreign carriers may rely on the airport operators' efforts, to the 

extent that those efforts fully meet the requirements of this Part. What happens, though, if the 

foreign airport operators' efforts do not fully provide the accessibility that this rule requires (e.g., 

the airport operator is responsible for providing wheelchair assistance to passengers within the 

terminal, but does not provide connecting service between gates for wheelchair users who are 

changing planes on flights covered by the rule)'? In such a case, this rule requires air carriers to 

supplement the services provided by the airport operator, by providing the supplemental services 

itself or hiring a contractor to do so. If the carrier cannot legally do so (e.g., the airline is legally 

prohibited from supplementing the airport's services to passengers with disabilities), the carrier 

could seek a conflict of laws waiver. U.S. Department of Transportation, Nondiscrimination on the 

Basis of Disability in Air Travel, 73 Fed. Reg. 27614,27619 (May 13, 2008). 
If you have any questions about this matter, please contact Blane Workie, of my staff, or me at 

(202) 366-9342. You may also reach us by fax at (202) 366-7152. 

Sincerely. 

~~~ Assistant General Counsel for 

Aviation Enforcement and Proceedings