A Research On Flight Delay

Flight delay is inevitable in air transportation, there are many factors that may cause the flight delay, such as the weather, the flow control, the air traffic control, the mechanical problem and the passengers. It is somewhat enforceable because the regulations of Civil Aviation Law of the People's Republic of China makes fuzzy definition of flight delay and fuzzy regulations of compensation responsibility and The Instruction suggestions of economic compensation for flight delay by CAAC(it will be called Instruction suggestions for short below) issued in 2004 makes too much regulations in matters of principle.In practice, air carriers and passengers have different status and different understanding on relevant regulations, this may cause to air carriers' failure to keep a commitment because of their superior legal status and passengers' difficulties of putting forward legal claims in order to safeguard their interest. As dispute happened, passengers that are inferior at information acquisition and negotiation status always take extreme or even illegal ways to safeguard rights, as a result, " no tumult, no compensation; small tumult, small compensation; big tumult, big tumult" has become a casting couch, and finally this develops become a vicious circle that eventually seriously influence passengers' trip and the harmonious development of air transportation.Based on the theoretical definition of flight delay, this thesis makes an effort on the analyse of factors that effect the definition of flight delay, and discusses the legal application of flight delay. At the end, it will make a definition of reasonable flight delay and the unreasonable flight delay, and then discuss the collateral duty of reasonable flight delay and the legal liability of unreasonable flight delay so as to solve the disputes due to the flight delay. It has four parts as its main contents:Part One mainly analyses the theoretical definition of flight delay according to the regulations of flight delay in international conventions and the Civil Aviation Law of the People's Republic of China. Part Two mainly discusses the factors that effect the definition of flight delay. In part One, through the analyses of definition of "delay" in the interpretation of Civil Aviation Law, and combining with Bret Harte's theory of "partial contract", the author draw a conclusion that it is is better for the definition of flight delay if we do not make a clear definition of "delay". This part mainly elaborates several important factors' effect on flight delay through the differences between time and incidents and the comparison between reasonable flight delay and unreasonable flight delay, and makes a focus discussion on air ticket overbooking. Part Three mainly discusses the legal application of flight delay. Firstly, it analyses the definition and characteristics of air passenger transport contract, and points out that air passenger transport contract has its special applicability. Secondly, R establishes the standards for distinguishing international flight from civil flight on the basis of definition of flight, and then analyses the the legal application of international flight delay and civil flight delay.Part Four mainly discusses the legal liability of flight delay. It has analysed that whether the liability of flight delay is a liability for breach of contract or a liability for infringement, and makes a focus discussion on the constitution of unreasonable flight delay and the ways of legal liability undertaking. In the end, Viewing on the creative ways to combine delayed time with mileage in " the 21 rules of the European Union" for Reference, the author puts forward some ideas on compensation plan for flight delay in order to do a favor on the tense conflict between air carriers and passengers due to the flight delay.