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The Warsaw Convention and the Washington Compromise

A View from America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2016

Andreas F. Lowenfeld*
Affiliation:
Department of State, United States of America, now Fellow of the Institute of Politics in the J. F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Extract

Half a year has passed since the major airlines of the world, in a burst of energy, rallied round to “save” the Warsaw Convention. The Convention had as its principal effect a limitation of $8300 (not quite £3000) on liability of air carriers to international passengers for death or injury, and the United States had given formal notice that it could no longer accept this. The effort to update the Warsaw Convention of 1929 had, essentially, failed so far as the United States was concerned, in that the revision proposed at the Hague Conference in 1955 was only double, the Warsaw limit—$16 600 or £6000— still far below an acceptable ceiling on recoveries for accidental death caused by common carriers. The United States Senate had not ratified the Hague Protocol, it clearly was not going to, and all attempts by the United States Executive Branch to supplement the Warsaw/Hague limits—such as by compulsory trip insurance or voluntary waiver of limits by the carrier—had come to naught.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 1966

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References

Note on page 1062 * See, eg, The Warsaw File, Aeroplane, Vol 112, No 2861, 18th August 1966. For a detailed account of the development of the United States' position since 1929, see Lowenfeld and Mendelsohn, The United States and the Warsaw Convention, Harvard Law Review, January 1967.

Note on page 1062 † See Appendix for full text of the agreement.