Flight Accident: Legal Aspects

 

You can never say that your flight tonight will be a safe one. But based on the records from different airlines in just a year, a flight accident these recent times is very rare. And when an accident does occur, various associations when it comes to safety and security of airplanes gather and try to conduct an investigation of what was its cause. They are not only going to investigate the cause of it. They are also going to take note of the casualties and how the passengers are going to be compensated for the things that happened to them through legal means ( get in touch with Avocat Vesoul firm in France for more insights about this exact legal aspect )

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The problem here is that most people do not read the fine print of their tickets and even do not know what to do when they get into an accident. The reason for this is most obvious – most people are bored reading the fine print, and it is highly unlikely that the plane they are riding is not going to be in an accident soon. If you take a look at the recent airline accidents, not all of them have the same causes. Whether an accident is going to happen or not, it is your right to know what you should do if an accident does happen.

 

Airline responsibilities after airline crash

In the aspect of international flights, the one overseeing it is the Montreal Convention, which is an international air carrier treaty that was adopted back in the year 1999 by a United Nations agency called International Civil Aviation Organization. The crash will be investigated first before any decision is made on what to do with the affected passengers. If the airline is the one at fault based on the conclusion of the investigation, the treaty stipulates that they will be liable for the drawing rights of each passenger of up to 113,100. This is a value that has been established by IMF or the International Monetary Fund. It changes regularly and at this writing it equals the amount of about $170,00 per passenger. This amount is only in the US alone. It may be below or above the said amount, but at least it should be equivalent to that.

 

Are there any loopholes?

There are, especially if you are not aware of your rights that you can sue the airlines for not honoring their duty to compensate every passenger affected by accident. In the past 9 decades, there have been a lot of limitations that are imposed by the international treaties and laws on the kind of things that the victims of the airline accident can recover. Today, there is no limits to how much the victim can recover. This is done so unless it is proven that the airline has taken all the measures to ensure that all passengers are safe before it takes flight.

 

By default, the carrier is the one held liable for the damages. However, they are not the only ones to be blamed for this. As it is already detailed above, it depends on the outcome of the investigation.

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