What is an accident? Asela Wijeyaratne & Mark Welbourn examine a return to orthodoxy under the Montreal Convention on air passenger liability
- This article considers the recent High Court decision of Arthern v Ryanair DAC in which the court examined the aviation liability regime under the Montreal Convention.
- By contrast to recent decisions of the High Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union, it is considered that this decision represents a return to an orthodox interpretation of the Convention, in respect of the meaning of the term ‘accident’.
The Montreal Convention 1999 is a multilateral treaty to which the UK is a party. The Convention applies to international carriage of passengers by aircraft. It provides (among other things) an exclusive liability regime for the death of or injury to passengers. The Montreal Convention is the successor to the Warsaw Convention, which opened for signature in 1929.
While the Warsaw Convention had the ‘primary purpose of… limiting the liability of air carriers in order
