International Agreements and Organizations — Page 52, Lesson 98

Let’s pick up with the international agreements that shaped the rules we fly under today. I want to walk you through a series of protocols and conventions, each one amending or extending an earlier treaty. We’ll go in chronological order, and I’ll explain what each one actually changed. First, September 1975, Montreal. We have the Additional Protocols 1 through 4 to Amend the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to International Carriage by Air. That long title is the Warsaw Convention system — the treaty that set the rules and liability limits for international air carriage. These 1975 protocols did one central thing: they allowed payment to be made in IMF Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs. The SDR is an international reserve asset created by the International Monetary Fund, and it replaced the gold-based limits that the earlier protocols used. Specifically, Protocol 1 replaces the limits in the Hague Protocol with SDRs, Protocol 2 replaces the limits in the Guatemala Protocol with SDRs, and Protocol 4 changes liability regarding goods — it applies SDRs to cargo. So the key idea here is a shift from gold to SDRs as the unit for liability limits. Next, September 1978, also Montreal. This is the Protocol to Amend the Convention on Damage by Foreign Aircraft to Third Parties on the Surface. That base convention is Rome 1952, which dealt with liability when an aircraft causes damage to people or property on the ground. This 1978 protocol extended Rome 1952 to include damage caused by an aircraft registered to an operator of another contracting state. In other words, it broadened the scope so that the surface-damage rules applied not just based on where the aircraft was registered, but also based on the operator’s state. Now, December 1982, Montego Bay — the UN Convention of the High Seas. This is a big one for how we navigate internationally. It made air piracy an offence. It permitted hot pursuit — that’s the right of a coastal state to chase a foreign vessel that has violated its laws. It extended territorial waters to 12 nautical miles. It established a 200 nautical mile economic zone that must be respected, and importantly for us, it preserved the freedom to overfly that zone. It also addressed straits: the right to transit straits without permission was no longer allowed, but the freedom to transit straits under the first freedom was reinforced. The first freedom of the air is the right to fly over another state’s territory without landing. And finally, this convention established the authority of the Hamburg Court regarding disputes of overflying rights in territorial waters, contiguous zones, and so on. Next, September 1990, Cyprus — the Convention of Cyprus. This one established the JAA, the Joint Aviation Authorities. That was the body that coordinated regulatory standards among European states before the modern EASA system. Finally, October 1995, Kuala Lumpur — the IATA Intercarrier Agreement on Passenger Liability. IATA is the International Air Transport Association, the trade body for airlines. Under this agreement, IATA members agreed to waive the limitations of liability and the recoverable damages that had been established by the Warsaw Convention. So instead of the old capped limits, damages were to be awarded by reference to the law of the domicile of the passenger — that is, the law of the passenger’s permanent home. So the thread running through all of these is the evolution of liability and jurisdiction in international air law: from gold to SDRs, from registration to operator, from limited liability to passenger-domicile-based damages, and the expansion of state rights over the seas. That’s the full set of agreements in this passage.