Airports

In a case reported earlier, the Austrian Civil Supreme Court has now deleivered the final judgment. The plaintiffs had missed their Antarctica cruise following a delayed departure of their feeder flight to Frankfurt caused by snow covered runways at the Vienna airport. They sued the carrier and the airport for damages.

In the case which I had referred to in Rostock as "Frozen Antarctica Dreams" and which regarded a couple who had missed their Antarctica cruise following of a delayed departure of their feeder flight to Frankfurt caused by snow covered runways at the Vienna airport had sued the carrier and the airport for damages but their claim was dismissed by the court of first instance, the appelate court (OLG Wien) has now reversed the judgment and held both, Lufthansa and the Vienna airport liable for the damages.

The inspector general of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported that full-body X-ray scanning machines at airport security checkpoints use an "extremely low dose" of radiation which is safe for passengers. The report refers to a Johns Hopkins University assesment of 2010 which said that a passenger would have to be screened 47 times a day for a year to exceed yearly limits of radiation set by the American National Standards Institute.

The European Commission has adopted a proposal for an EU framework on security scanners. This legislation allows airports and Member States that wish to use security scanners for the screening of passengers to do so under strict operational and technical conditions. Member States and airports do not have an obligation to deploy security scanners, but if they decide to use them, they will have to comply with the operational conditions and performance standards set at European level such as or example that: