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U.S. Department 

of Transportation 

Office of the Secretary 

of Transportation 

GENERAL COUNSEL 

April15, 2009 

1200 New Jersey Avenue. SE 

Washington, DC 20590 

Certified Maii-Retum Receipt Requested 

Mr. Sami Sarelius 

FinnairOYJ 

228 East 4STh Street • 8Th floor 

New York, New York 10017 

Dear Mr. Sarelius: 

Re: Conflict of Law Waiver Request 

Concerning Provisions in Subpart 

G of 14 CFR Part 382 

This letter concerns Finnair OYJ's (Finnair) 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.lOS) of the 

Department's Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA) regulation. Finnair'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. 

Finnair asserts a conflict of law between sections 382.9S. 382.101, 382.103, and 382.10S 

of Part 382 and Articles 7.1, 1.S, 1.6, and 8.1 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 382.9S, 382.101. 382.103, and 382.10S, carriers. not airport 

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

assistance. Finnair maintains that under EU 1107, air carriers have no contractual 

relationship with the managing body of the airport and, thus, no way of ensuring 

compliance on the part of the airport operator. 

We note that Part 382 does not prohibit Finnair 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 382.10S of our rule requires Finnair to provide supplemental services to 

ensure that these requirements are met. 1 In other words, to ensure compliance with Part 

1 The preamble to 14 CFR Part 382 provides further clarification of the Department's intent 
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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 of EC 1107 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 in 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 382.95, 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 airport-by-airport showing that it 

was precluded from providing supplementary services. Finnair 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 of law, the Department must deny Finnair's conflict 

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

[T)he final rule should not be understood to require carriers to duplicate the 

accommodations 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 caMot legally do so (e.g., the 

airline is legally prohibited frorri 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). 
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If you have any questions about this matter, please contact Mike Spollen, of my staff, or 

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

cc: Anita M. Mosner 

Sophy Chen 

Sincerely, 

.-- ~~2 

~Assistant General Counsel for 

Aviation Enforcement and Proceedings