Grounds acquittance from civil liability of the carrier for breach of contract of carriage passengers and baggage

Abstract

The essence of the concepts of «force majeure» and «emergency» has been clarified, revealed their contents; individual circumstances as grounds for acquittance from the carrier’s civil liability with the practice of the European Court of Justice are considered.

In civil law single questions of the grounds carrier acquittance from civil liability for breach of contract are analyzed by national and foreign scientists as A. Vyhodyanskyy, A. Dombruhova, B. P. Eliseev, E. V. Passyek, G. V. Tsirat, P. S. Dempsey, H. Manuel and others. Some aspects are still controversial, particularly value the concepts of «force majeure» and «emergency» as grounds for acquittance from civil liability carrier, always the fault of the aircraft is the factor to release the air carrier from civil liability and so on.

The purpose of this article is consideration the issue of air carrier grounds for acquittance of civil liability in case of breach of contract of carriage of passengers and baggage, namely the delay or cancellation highlighting with illumination of the practice of the European Court of Justice and national courts.

Legislative grounds for acquittance from civil liability of the air carrier are determined by different concepts – the «emergency», «force majeure», and therefore there is a need to clarify their essence. Legal understanding of the concept of «emergency» is identical to the concept of «force majeure» because their essence is revealed with the help of the same characteristics, namely urgency and inevitability. Summarizing the views of scientists and legislative approach to determine the origins of force majeure and their list can be noted that these include such circumstances that caused the social, natural, technological, environmental and other phenomena. Emergency may also be caused by natural, social, technical, political and other phenomena too. Thus, the circumstances and the nature of their origin, content of analyzed concepts are identical. Technical problem can be considered urgency only when it, at first, is not typical of the normal exercise of an air carrier and, secondly, is beyond the actual control of the carrier due to its nature or origin. Technical problems which appear in connection with the maintenance of aircraft or through failure to carry out proper maintenance can not be by themselves qualify as «emergency».

Firstly, the concept of «emergency» covered by the concept of «force majeure» because the urgency is one of the signs of the latter. Secondly, when the legislator uses the concept of «emergency», or does not use it, the conditions of release the air carrier from civil liability of are urgency and inevitability of the circumstances. This actually shows the identification of the concept of «emergency» and the concept of «force majeure». Thirdly, the contents of the analyzed concepts form the fact that usually has the same origin. Prevalence of technical challenges faced by carriers themselves is not the factor that indicates the presence or absence of «emergency».