Flight Delays, Legal Issues To Explore

Flight delay is the most common phenomenon in civil aviation transportation service. It has always been a serious problem for all the carriers and passengers. For passengers, it brings lots of trouble and increases travel costs, even makes merchants miss business chances. For carriers, it influences the transportation service terribly and directly damages their business reputation and economic benefits. There are a large number of elements that can cause flight delay, such as weather, mechanical bug, air control etc. Since no clear compensation standard exists now and there are too many requests from consumers, General Administration of Civil Aviation of China enacted Opinions on the Economic Compensation of Flight Delay on June 26th, 2004. However, the Opinions are only some relevant policies without legal effect. Moreover, in actual life the parties do not understand the relevant nature and the liabilities so well, carriers are not willing to perform their duties and passengers cannot present proper claims, so the disputes never stop. Therefore, the key point is to make sure the legal nature and liabilities of flight delay. Here in this article, the author states the international legal principles about flight delay and the damages it causes, combines the relevant regulations and cases, probes deeply into the meanings of flight delay, the applicable law, the resulting liabilities, China's relevant legislation and practice, and finally gives some ideas and opinions on the current problems and developing trend. The author hopes that it will be beneficial to solve the actual disputes.