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