Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
LIABILITY DAMAGES FOR INJURIES SUSTAINED BY PASSENGERS IN THE EVENT OF HIJACKING OF AIRCRAFT AND OTHER VIOLATIONS OF AVIATION SECURITY
Henrik Gam *
A. Introduction
The first hijacking of an aircraft took place as early as 1931. Since then, violations of aviation security directed against the aircraft and passengers, whether in the form of hijacking, sabotage or suchlike, have become a very widespread and a very serious problem.1 Attempts to put an end to these violations have been only partly successful, having to some extent been obstructed by the fact that there is actually not just one problem but a series of different problems—international and national, political, legal and economic.
In analysing the liability of an airline, as carrier, for damages for “injuries” (a term used here to encompass personal injuries and death) suffered by passengers, a distinction should in principle be made between international and national flights. However, since this area of investigation is essentially one of international flights, and since the legal position of national flights often resembles the rules for international flights, the following discussion will deal with international flights only.
B. International flights under the Warsaw Convention (as amended by the Hague Protocol)
For international flights, the most relevant provisions are those of the Warsaw Convention of 1929 as amended by the Hague Protocol of 1955. Under Art. 1(2) of the Convention, international flights are such flights as have their aerodromes of departure and destination in two states parties to the Convention or just in one signatory state where intermediate landing in another state has been agreed upon. Whether or not a flight fulfils these conditions depends on the route agreed upon between the airline and the passenger as expressed by way of the passenger ticket, not the actual route.
* Faculty of Laws, University College London. The following abbreviated citations are used here: Avi. (Aviation Cases); J.A.L.C. (Journal of Air Law and Commerce); RFDA (Revue Française de Droit Aérien); Shawcross & Beaumont (P. Martin et al., Shawcross & Beaumont’s Air Law, London, 4th edn., 1977).
1. Globally, in the period 1949–85, 1, 539 persons were killed in 87 registered bomb explosions on aircraft (in 1980–85, 505 and 18 respectively) and there were 498 hijackings and 281 attempted hijackings (in 1980–85, 123 and 80 respectively). See the “Aircraft Hijackings and Other Criminal Acts against Civil Aviation Statistical and Narrative Reports”, as compiled by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. According to a survey by R. Elshetewi, Le détournement d’avions en droit international (Paris, 1985), 9, in the period 1970–79 alone, as a result of criminal acts against civil aviation, 1,255 persons were killed and 1,013 were wounded; 33,097 were taken hostage.
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