When may domestic carriage be characterised as international?

No apology is tendered for turning once again to the question of delivery of a passenger ticket for international carriage by air and the implications of failure to do so for the right of the air carrier to limit its liability. A recent decision of the authoritative United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on a novel point of law has drawn fresh attention to the difficulties courts face in applying the bare and indeed brief words of the 1929 Warsaw Convention to factual circumstances beyond the immediate contemplation of the treaty draftsmen.

On June 24, 1975, Efstratios Stratis was a passenger aboard an Eastern Air Lines Boeing 727 from New Orleans to New York. He was a Greek seaman being repatriated to Athens by his employers upon leaving his ship at Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He flew by Delta Airlines to New Orleans and following arrival in New York was to connect with an Olympic Airways service to Greece.

The Boeing 727 crashed on its final approach to land at John F. Kennedy Airport —a victim of windshear—killing 113 of its occupants. Stratis was one of the few survivors but he sustained injuries of exceptional severity. The Trial Court awarded damages of $6.5 million to the seaman, of which 60% was apportioned against the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, largely on the grounds that Stratis’ quadriplegia was caused by the treatment administered at Harlem Hospital, it not being appreciated at an early stage that he had a cervical fracture. The balance of the award was returned against Eastern Air Lines and the United States of America, as the authority responsible for air traffic control functions at New York.

Various issues arose for consideration by the Court of Appeals in a case described by Oakes, C.J., as “chock full of incongruities and perplexities”. However, the sole issue addressed in this article is whether the nature of the plaintiff’s contract of carriage was such as to entitle the airline to plead the Warsaw Convention limit of liability (as modified by the Montreal Agreement—CAB 18900). The successful raising of this defence would leave Eastern with a maximum exposure of $75,000.