Montreal Convention in Ukraine: Carrier Liability After the 2024 Limits Revision

Anna Tsirat, Doctor of Laws | JVS Law

The Montreal Convention 1999 has applied in Ukraine since 6 May 2009. Ukraine acceded by Law No. 685-VI of 17 December 2008, and from that date the Convention displaced the Warsaw System for carriage between Ukraine and other contracting states.

On 28 December 2024 the liability limits rose again — by 17.9%, the largest single increase since the Convention entered into force. Below are the current figures, how the two-tier liability regime works, and what changes if the claim is brought in Ukraine.

SDR — Special Drawing Rights, the IMF unit of account, valued daily against a currency basket. Source: ICAO, 2024 Revised Limits of Liability Under the Montreal Convention 1999. Article 24 requires ICAO to review the limits every five years against inflation.

For death or bodily injury the Convention splits liability into two tiers. This is its central departure from the Warsaw System.

First tier — up to 151,880 SDR. Liability is strict. The carrier is liable regardless of fault, and the claimant does not need to prove negligence. The only reduction available is for contributory negligence of the injured person.

Second tier — above 151,880 SDR. There is no upper limit. To escape liability the carrier must prove that the damage was not due to its negligence or wrongful act, or that it was solely due to the act of a third party. The burden sits with the carrier, not the passenger.

The Convention gives the claimant a choice of five fora, and in practice that choice often matters more than the substantive rules:

• the carrier’s place of domicile;
• its principal place of business;
• the place where the contract was made, if the carrier has an establishment there;
• the place of destination;
• the passenger’s principal and permanent residence — provided the carrier operates services there and has premises there. The Warsaw System had no equivalent.

Why Ukraine may be the forum. For a passenger resident in Ukraine, or where Ukraine is the place of destination, Ukrainian courts have jurisdiction under the Convention itself — no separate jurisdiction agreement is needed. Foreign carriers serving Ukrainian routes should assume Ukrainian proceedings are available to claimants, and foreign claimants with a Ukrainian nexus should weigh Ukraine against the alternatives on cost and timing rather than on the limits, which are identical everywhere.

The limitation period is two years from arrival, from the date the aircraft ought to have arrived, or from the date carriage stopped. It is a hard bar: it does not suspend and cannot be restored.

The Convention does not always apply. Both the state of departure and the state of destination must be parties. As of 2026 that is roughly 140 states plus the European Union. If either end of the itinerary is outside the Convention, the Warsaw System applies, with materially lower limits.

The limits are a ceiling, not an award. The claimant still has to prove loss. The limit only caps recovery within the first tier.

A declared special interest removes the cap for baggage and cargo. Where the passenger or consignor declared a value at check-in or consignment and paid the supplementary sum, the carrier is liable up to that declared sum rather than 1,519 SDR or 26 SDR per kilogram.

Date of the event governs which limits apply. The 2024 figures apply to events on or after 28 December 2024. Earlier incidents remain under the previous limits — so the first question in any claim is which revision was in force on the day.

Archive: JVS client briefing of 8 May 2009 (PDF, 3 pp., in Russian) — prepared when the Convention took effect for Ukraine. Reproduced unchanged as a historical document: the liability figures in it reflect the 2009 position and have since been revised twice, in 2019 and 2024.