The Research On Flight Delay In Civil Aviation Transportation

Air transportation meets people's demand of the fast travel for its quick and convenience, but flight delay may make passengers, shippers and other consumers question the timeliness of transportation, resulting in dissatisfaction and leading to a varying degrees of disputes. Since 1929, the terminology of delay appears in the international conventions, domestic and foreign scholars on the concept of flight delay have not stopped the controversy , and by now there has not formed a unified understanding about flight delay yet. This greatly affects the legislative process of it. At present, flight delay has become the focus of air transportation for consumers, and also be an important factor which influences satisfaction of consumers. However, it results in disposal procedure being still unable to effectively regulated that the disposal standards to flight delay have not been unified, the functions of government regulation are weakened, the relevant laws and regulations ought to be improved. There is a considerable controversy among seriously among the various units in the industry, civil aviation industry and the community. It affects the entire aviation industry service levels.In essence, there is a contractual relationship between air carriers and passengers, shippers. The two sides agree to exercise their rights under the contract to fulfill obligations. Flight delay performance of the contract belong to the category of non-compliance occurring. From legal point of view, flight delay is defined as a legal factor that carriers fail to arrive and depart the airport at contractual time or fail to let passengers, baggage or cargo arrive at the destination within a reasonable time. In this paper, principles of civil law and contractual, civil aviation management theory, are used to introduce legislation status about flight delay home and abroad, to conclude the concept of flight delay and analyse its property, to explain the principle to bear legal liabilities, to show the different liabilities the carriers and their agents should assume in case of reasonable and unreasonable delay. On the basis of analysing the situation and trends of China's legislature, the author put forward some suggestions and solutions to solve the problem of flight delay .This paper consists of four parts:The first part: the concept of flight delay. The author describes the origin of flight delay terminology, elaborates on the basic connotation of flight delas, and defines the legal concept of flight delay. In the meantime , the author explain the conditions that constitute the flight delay: Firstly, the actual departure time is later than the appointed time. Secondly, it cost irreasonable time when arriving the ultimate destination.The second part : the law of flight delay at home and abroad. The author describes the history of the development of international conventions, the regulations of aviation associations, the rules of Europe and the United States , and law in China.The third part: legal liabilities of flight delay. Using principles of contract law, The author analyses the legal nature of the flight delay, and explains the legal liabilities and application of the law.The fourth part: the deficiencies and improvement of aviation law. The author focuses on the status and deficiencies in the present law, and puts forward a dispute settlement mechanism and suggestions on improving aviation law.