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A NEW ERA IN THE LAW OF INTERNATIONAL CARRIAGE BY AIR: FROM WARSAW (1929) TO MONTREAL (1999)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2008
Abstract
For 70 years the 1929 Warsaw Convention,1 which came into force in 1933, governed supreme, in its numerous permutations, virtually all international carriage of passengers, baggage and cargo throughout the world and, thanks to voluntary adoption by States, also much of their domestic carriage, albeit with modifications. It was not until 1999 that nations concluded at Montreal the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air2 designed to replace it. The latter came into force on 4 November 2003, by coincidence also 70 years after the entry into force of Warsaw.3 A new era in the law of international carriage by air has begun.
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References
1 Convention pour l'unification de certaines règles relatives au transport aérien international, Warsaw, 1929, in force 1933 (137 LNTS11; ICAO Doc 7838, 9201). Both the original authentic French text and the official British translation, International Convention for the Unification of certain Rules Relating to International Carriage by Air, may be found in the UK Treaty Series No 11 (1933), Cmd 4284; Carriage by Air Act, 1932 (22 and 23 Geo 5, c 36, First Schedule). In the United States, where the authentic text applies, the translation that is used (49 Stat 3000, TS 876) differs slightly from the British. All three versions are reproduced in IATA,Essential Documents on International Air Carrier Liability (1999), which contains most of the relevant documents on the subject, right up to the Montreal Agreement 1999.Google Scholar
2 ICAO Doc 9740; UK Command Papers, Cm 4651; Carriage by Air Act 1961 (c 27), Schedule IB, as inserted by Schedule 1 to the Carriage by Air Acts (Implementation of the Montreal Convention 1999) Order 2002 (SI 2002/263). The UK ratified the Convention on 29 04 2004 at the same time as the European Community and twelve other EC States, and brought the Order into force on 28 June 2004, the day its and the latter's ratifications and approval took effect. The EC Instrument of Approval contains a declaration specifying the EC's competence in the matter.Google ScholarCf Cheng, B ‘The 1999 Montreal Convention on International Carriage by Air Concluded on the Seventieth Anniversary of the 1929 Warsaw Convention’ (2000) 49 Zeitschrift für Luftund Weltraumrecht (ZLW) 287–307 and 484–99.Google Scholar
3 ie 60 days after the 30th ratification, which was that of the USA. Ratification by the USA ensures that in due course there would be quasi-universal acceptance.Google Scholar
4 See Cheng, B ‘The Law of ‘International’ and ‘Non-International’ Carriage by Air’ The Law Society's Gazette 60 (1963) 196–219, 444–53, 518–25, 603–10, 665–71, 747–55, 871–6; 61 (1964) 37–42, 115–22,192–9, 261–6, 336–44.Google ScholarThe law as stated in this series of articles remains valid insofar as the Warsaw, Warsaw-Hague, and Guadalajara Conventions are concerned. These instruments are still in force, and, unless denounced, remain binding on the contracting States, even when they ratify and become parties to either Montreal Protocol No 4 (see text to n 21 below) or the Montreal Convention. The treaty provisions remain unchanged by the subsequent nontreaty extras in favour of the passenger, whether unilaterally imposed by individual States or voluntarily offered by the airlines themselves. In practice, essentially only the limit of liability and national carriers are affected by them, apart from the 1966 Montreal Intercarrier Agreement in which participating carriers of various nationalities also undertake to waive their defence under Article 20(1) of Warsaw and Warsaw-Hague (see further nn 11 and 12 below), the Italian Law of 1988 (see further text to n 30 below), and very peripherally EC Regulation No 2027/97, as amended by EC Regulation No 889/2002 (see section m.B below).Google Scholar
5 Art 1(2). As used in the Convention, ‘international carriage’ refers to carriage governed by the Convention (Convention carriage), that is, carriage of which, according to the contract, the initial point of departure and the final destination are in two contracting States to the Convention, or in the same contracting State if there is an agreed stopping place in any foreign country.Google Scholar
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15 The Guatemala City Protocol actually uses the term ‘domicile’, but not in the English law sense. Montreal uses the expression ‘principal residence’.Google Scholar
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