The Legal Impacts of COVID-19 in the Travel, Tourism and Hospitality Industry

Article 2 indicates that all the fixed and variable contributions in the concession contracts of airports with payment due date in 2020 could be paid up to 18 December, an important aspect given that COVID-19 severely impacted all airports in virtue of the large reduction of flights cancellations and flow of passengers. The focus of this rule is to allow that the contributions may be paid after the expected term of COVID-19 crisis to recover the economic capacity to pay after the defined date previously. Following the analysis, Article 3 is related to travel passages specifically. Its caput mentions that the term to refund the passage value will be twelve months respecting all the specific rules of the air travel sector. Equally important, the first paragraph indicates that all consumers are free from contractual penalties and any extra charge if they accept to receive the credit to be used within twelve months, having the day of contracted flight as start date. Moreover, the second paragraph establishes that this Article is applicable to air transport contracts finished up to 31 December 2020. 1.2. Legislative Decree No. 6/2020 The Legislative Decree No. 6/2020 7 dated 20 March 2020 is worthy of mention because it was responsible for recognising the state of public calamity due to the impact of COVID-19 in Brazil. This state is used to indicate an exceptional situation, as well as to allow the Government to not comply with some rules. The Government can also produce new norms, in view of the COVID-19 context. This Decree is the main legislative source to justify the other legislative changes as well as the administrative effort to be mentioned above. 1.3. Consumer National Secretariat’s Technical Note No. 2/2020 The third effort to regulate the matters related to the air transport contracts was an administrative action. The Technical Note No. 2/2020 8 was produced by the Consumer National Secretariat (SENACON), body bound to the Ministry of Justice, having as purposes to offer general orientations on the impact of COVID-19 in the consumption relations, especially those linked to the air transport sector. 7 Available o n https://legis.senado.leg.br/norma/31993957/publicacao/31994188 , accessed on 10 April 2020. 8 Available on https://www.novo.justica.gov.br/news/senacon-do-mjsp-lanca-nota-conjunta-para-orientar- consumidor-sobre-coronavirus/sei_mj-11181853-nota-tecnica.pdf , accessed on 10 April 2020.