MONETARY LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY IN INTERNATIONAL PRIVATE AIR LAW

The existing monetary limitations of liability in international private air law are reviewed and compared with limits in other branches of transport law. The reasons submitted to justify monetary limitations of liability in air law are summarized and criticised.; A comparison of the level of limits with statistics and the social requirement to provide full recovery of damages lead to the conclusion that the limits are inadequate and unrealistically low. The problem of the unit of account in which limits are expressed (gold, SDR) and the idea of freezing the amount of damages recoverable in conventions without self-regulatory clauses are discussed from the perspective of inflation and the current economic situation. Deficiencies in the existing legal solutions in air law are exposed and criticised. In conclusion, a new system of compensation to victims of air crashes breaking away from the existing monetary limitations of liability in air law and based on prevailing aviation insurance market practices is proposed.