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Chapter Eight Ch

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Chapter Eight Ch. 8 - Airline Liability

1)From the standpoint of legal liability for negligence, what difference does it make whether a domestic commercial flight is a common carrier or a contract carrier operation?

2. Is the assumption of risk defense available to an airline to defend against lawsuits brought by injured passengers or the survivors of passengers killed in an airline crash?

Why?

3. What is an airline tariff?
4. Can a mixture of domestic and international passengers be on the same flight?
5. How can you tell whether a person is a domestic or an international passenger? Describe.

6. It is a snowy and bitterly cold winter day in Cleveland when the commuter airline flight from Montreal, Canada, pulls up to the gate. As the international passengers are walking across the ramp from the airliner to the terminal building, one of them slips on an icy patch and suffers an injury. Is the airline liable for this passenger’s injury? Why?

Are there any artificial dollar limits on that liability?

7. A domestic passenger and an international passenger are standing side by side in the airline terminal’s baggage claim area waiting for their bags to arrive when a lone terrorist walks up and detonates his suicide vest, killing them both. Is the airline liable for either death? Explain. 
8. Snow Bird Airlines flight 13 provides nonstop service between Anchorage and Phoenix. All passengers aboard today’s flight are ticketed from Anchorage to Phoenix and none has an origin or destination in another country on his or her ticket. A pressurization problem arises en route, and the crew decides to make a precautionary landing in Vancouver, Canada. If this attempted stop in Canada leads to an accident will the Montreal Convention apply? Why?
9. Aero Cargo flight 13 provides nonstop cargo service between Bogota, Columbia and Miami. Prior to takeoff from Bogota, the crew is unable to start one of the engines on the aging four-engine DC-7C. Advised of the problem, the company’s chief pilot and vice president of operations orders the crew to proceed on schedule with the cargo using the three functioning engines (a procedure known in the company as “attempting an air start”), making it clear that if the pilots do not comply, they will be fired. The pilots attempt the takeoff, but the aircraft is not airborne at the end of the runway, where it crashes and burns. What is the airline’s liability, if any, for the resulting destruction of the cargo if both the United States and Columbia have ratified the Montreal Convention?
10. What effect has ratification of the Montreal Convention had on the volume of litigation of claims for injury to international airline passengers?