Research On Co-passenger Personal Torts And International Air Carrier's Liability

Modern air travel is convenient and relatively inexpensive, allowing more passengers to travel to more places than ever before. Moreover, air travel is now a routine and fundamental aspect of modem life. One result of this growth is that in-flight disturbances by and between passengers have become increasingly common. The personal harassments between passengers become unavoidable. On the other hand, in the face of frequent personal torts between passengers, whether international air carriers are liable to passengers for their injuries suffered? And if they are, how to take on liability? The international community doesn't reach a consistent consensus with these questions so far. There are no specific provisions and suggestions accordingly in the basic system—Warsaw-Montreal scheme which regulates air carder's liability.The basic starting point to these questions is to make idiographic analysis in accordance with the "ACCIDENT" criterion of Warsaw-Montreal scheme. Considering international legislation, jurisprudence theory, states judicatory practice, this paper tries to make some discussions and respond to whether international air carriers are liable to the injured passengers. And if they are, how to take on their liability. Basing on this research, we try to provide a kind of way of thinking for right redress of innocent victims who suffered co-passenger personal infringement, for better legal rights protection airlines give to passengers and for disputes settlement in courts.The paper is divided four parts: part one gives general review on the evolvement of air carrier's liability system of Warsaw-Montreal scheme and summarizes passenger-co-passenger personal assaults. Part two analyses the meaning of "ACCIDENT" in the conventions, and regards this as an instruction to launch the accident analysis of co-passenger personal torts, then lays the foundation for setting up air carder's liability system. Part three concretely sets forth air carder's liability system contents from quality of air carrier's liability, principle of liability-bearing, range of liability, liability limitation and defense. Part four examines international air carrier's liability system using co-passenger personal torts cases, and at the same time points out the significant reference to the aviation law legislation of our country.