Carriage by air : a sui generis liability regime

Abstract

The 1929 Warsaw Convention remains till this day the most important source of legislation regulating the Liability of the Air Carrier. This, despite the numerous attempts to update the liability regime established by it. These latter attempts however, never garnered the same adhesions as the original 1929 Convention, thus resulting in a scenario in which the former instrument was never completely superseded by the latter. The result was a confusing plurality of regimes which has made the Warsaw System untenable for airlines, but most especially for passengers. Another consequence is that despite The Warsaw Convention's aged concepts, conceived in a period where the aviation industry was in its infancy, those concepts have remained prevalent in most States till this day. The 1999 Montreal Convention is the latest attempt to address the deficiencies of the Warsaw System and was the product of a global realisation that the prevailing situation could not persist. The Montreal Convention was intended by the drafters to be a fresh start, not a supplementation of the Warsaw Instruments, since this approach had proved counter productive. Though this Convention came into force in 2003, it is only time which will tell us whether it is plausible to start talking of a new, global, unitary system of air carrier liability. If successful, however, and the Warsaw Convention definitively interred, the 1929 Convention and its progeny's portentous shadow will continue to linger over the system established by the I 999 Montreal Convention, since it will remain the primary interpretative font of the New Convention which has borrowed heavily from its predecessors.