Catchpole Brent: Civil Aviation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Catchpole Brent: Civil Aviation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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BRENT CATCHPOLE (NZ First) 
: 
 First I congratulate the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee on the excellent work it has done on this bill. I also congratulate my colleague Peter Brown on the hard work he put into the bill while on the select committee. My congratulations also go to the Minister who has taken the opportunity to explain a number of parts of this bill that were causing some concern. I suggest that more Ministers could do that during the course of the passage of bills. 
I want to pick up on the issue of unruly passengers. I note that the bill in the tradition of all other aviation bills continues to keep the pilot in command of the aircraft. The pilot is in complete control and command with the assistance of his or her crew and that is very sound. I was absolutely staggered by ACT MP Deborah Coddington’s suggestion that members of the public should be able to retain the means of self-defence and even weapons of self-defence. She pointed out that perhaps it would be all right to take on board a pair of tweezers. She then blew her argument away by saying that a passenger had used sharpened chopsticks to try to take over an aircraft and had inflicted some very serious injuries on a member of the crew. The suggestion by that member that passengers should be able to retain the means of self-defence and the ability to gather together was staggering. Where would that stop? Would it mean passengers would be allowed to take a revolver on board as a means of self-defence? I am staggered at that suggestion. But to get back to the crew and the pilot in command being in total control of the aircraft I say the most important part of the bill is that it has not changed that status. 
I now move on to the liability of an airline in the case of a delay. We know that there are times at Wellington Airport in particular when it is impossible to get an aircraft off the ground or even to bring an aircraft into Wellington—not so much because of the wind but often because without the wind fog or a cloud may roll in and visibility problems make it impossible to get an aircraft in or out. In that case the airline should never be responsible for the delay. But we do have airlines that overbook aircraft. It is a tradition in the airline industry to overbook aircraft to the point where airlines judge that they will have a certain number of no-shows and people who are unable to travel which will therefore bring passenger numbers back to very close to the capacity level. Those judgments are sometimes thrown out by the fact that everybody shows up. There is a problem then and the airlines have to bump people off the flight. In those cases the airlines most definitely should be held responsible for the delay in a passenger’s travel and they need to compensate the passenger in some way. Many airlines compensate affected passengers by either giving them meal vouchers or putting them up in a hotel overnight until they can catch the next flight out. That is sound practice and this bill makes an airline liable for those delays when it has been a deliberate case of the airline either cancelling a flight or bumping passengers off it. 
The cancelling of the flight is another means whereby the airlines if there is a very light passenger loading will for technical reasons—usually a complaint of a mechanical fault—cancel a flight. I know of airlines that do that on a regular basis. I am not suggesting that our national carrier does it but I am saying that other carriers that travel in and out of New Zealand definitely do it. They cancel a flight because they do not have enough passengers and they put them on to another flight.