14 CFR Part 382 Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in Air Travel (Air Carrier Access Act): Preamble and Section-by-Section Analysis (with amendments issued through July 2010)

382.151 What are the requirements for providing Complaints Resolution Officials? The CRO requirement is essentially the same as under the current rule. U.S. carriers must make a CRO available – either in person or via telephone – at each airport the carrier serves, at all times the carrier is operating at the airport. Foreign carriers must make a CRO available at each airport serving flights the carrier operates that begin or end at a U.S. airport. The Department realizes that, in some cases, carriers operate covered flights infrequently. For example, a foreign carrier may fly from Dulles to a foreign airport only at 5 p.m. on Mondays and Thursdays. On other days, and on Monday and Thursday mornings for that matter, the foreign airline would not have to make a CRO available to persons at Dulles. CRO services would have to be made available in languages in which the carrier provides services to the general public.

This rule clarifies that carriers are responsible for making passengers aware of the availability of a CRO in some circumstances even if the passenger does not say “I want to talk to a CRO.” If a passenger raises a disability-related concern, and the carrier’s personnel do not immediately resolve the issue to the customer’s satisfaction, the carrier must say, in effect, “We have a CRO available that you can talk to about this problem if you want to. The CRO is our resource person who can help solve disability-related issues. Here is where you can find, or call, our CRO.”

CROs must have authority to definitively resolve complaints. This means they must have the power to overrule decisions of other carrier personnel, except that they are not required to have authority to countermand a safety decision of a pilot-in-command of an aircraft. Of course, even decisions of pilots, if they later are shown to be in noncompliance with this rule, can subject the carrier to DOT enforcement action.