1 / 15

PASSENGER RIGHTS

PASSENGER RIGHTS. By P.P.C. Haanappel At the Gdansk Air & Space Law Conference 2013. Passenger rights as a contractual issue. The contract of carriage between airline and passenger International Air Traffic / Transport Association (IATA) / Airline Conditions of Contract and Carriage

brook
Download Presentation

PASSENGER RIGHTS

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. PASSENGER RIGHTS By P.P.C. Haanappel At the Gdansk Air & Space Law Conference 2013

  2. Passenger rights as a contractual issue • The contract of carriage between airline and passenger • International Air Traffic / Transport Association (IATA) / Airline Conditions of Contract and Carriage • First IATA Conditions in 1927 (Vienna Conditions) • Substantially revised in the so-called Bermuda Conditions of the year 1949, and thereafter

  3. Freedom of contract • A fiction • Inequality of bargaining power • State / (inter)governmental intervention

  4. First international intervention • The Warsaw Convention on air carrier’s liability of the year 1929 • Quid pro quo: limited liability of the air carrier in exchange for presumed liability of the carrier

  5. The difficult area of delay in the Warsaw Convention • Article 19 of the Warsaw Convention • Clause 9 of the (former) IATA Conditions of Contract • Conflict: some regulators and courts intervene • E.g., Swiss government • US CAB (Civil Aeronautics Board) • German Bundesgerichtshof • The problem of delay continues to plague us!

  6. Montreal Convention 1999 • The regime for delay (Article 19) remains substantially the same, in comparison with the Warsaw Convention; the amount of damages is expressed in SDRs (max. 4150 SDR = approx. 3650 Euro) • The problem remains that denied boarding compensation (DBC) and flight cancellations are not covered by the Warsaw / Montreal conventional system

  7. Denied Boarding Compensation • Problem originates with computerized reservation systems (CRS) • Overbooking and “no shows” • The US Civil Aeronautics Board first intervenes in the 1970s: Part 250 CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) • The EU first intervenes in 1991: Regulation 295/1991 on DBC

  8. EU Regulation 261/2004 • Extended from DBC to also: • Flight cancellations; • Long flight delays. • Compatibility, in the area of delay, between Regulation 261 and the Montreal Convention? • Initial attitude; • Judicial “activism” in the European Court of Justice: the Sturgeon and TUI cases of 2009 and 2012

  9. Revision of Regulation 261 • Commission proposals in 2013 • Action in the European Parliament 2014 • The role of National Enforcement Bodies (NEB) • Can the new text solve the legal conflict between the European Regulation and the worldwide system of Article 19 of the Warsaw / Montreal conventional system? • The new German legislation in the Gesetz zur Schlichtung im Luftverkehr (Act on dispute settlement in air transport), in force 1-11-2013

  10. Other aspects of passenger rights • Voluntary or compulsory system • The European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) • The European Union (EU) • Other jurisdictions

  11. Proliferation of different sets of passenger rights • Conflicts of law and policy • Is a worldwide solution desirable and feasible?

  12. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) • Solution through Annex 9 on Facilitation?

  13. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) • Solution through the Passenger Services Conferences?

  14. The issue of consumer / user input • The issue of global representativeness

  15. Conclusion • Questions? • Discussion?

More Related