Unification of International Private Air Law: Anna Tsirat’s Monograph in Full

Aviation & Asset Finance | JVS Law

Under the Montreal Convention, the first-tier limit for a passenger’s death or bodily injury is a ceiling. The passenger still proves the loss, and not every claimant reaches the maximum. In the Ukrainian cases analysed in this book, courts read the same figure differently: as an unconditional amount the carrier must pay, and in one decision as a minimum payment regardless of the injury.

The gap between how a uniform rule was designed and how a national court applies it runs through the whole of Dr Anna Tsirat’s monograph. The book was published in Ukrainian by Pravo (Kharkiv) in 2018 and became the basis of her doctoral thesis, defended the following year. The full text of the printed edition is available here.

Six chapters. The first deals with how unification in this field works at all; the next three cover the liability regimes; the last two turn to transactions in aircraft objects and the finance behind today’s fleets.

1. Unification in general (pp. 13–61): the main instruments, the trends, and language. The conventions have several authentic texts, and a difference between them can decide a case. Ukraine’s official translation of the Montreal Convention uses a single word for the two distinct concepts in Articles 17 and 18, which the drafters kept apart on purpose to separate liability for passengers from liability for baggage.
2. Carrier liability to passengers (pp. 62–140): modernisation of the Warsaw system, the meaning of “accident”, the amount of liability, recoverable heads of damage, the period of liability, delay, jurisdiction.
3. Operator liability to third parties on the surface (pp. 141–173): the Rome Conventions of 1933 and 1952, the two Montreal Conventions of 2009, recognition and enforcement of judgments against operators.
4. Aviation insurance (pp. 174–195): how compulsory international liability insurance developed and where Ukraine stands.
5. Transactions in aircraft objects (pp. 196–237): sale, finance lease, operating lease, wet lease, cooperation agreements, security transactions.
6. Creditor remedies under the Cape Town Convention (pp. 238–277): International Registry interests, registration and priority, the three groups of creditor remedies, operator insolvency.

The bibliography runs to almost ninety pages (pp. 294–382).

From p. 383 the book carries Ukrainian translations of Air France v. Saks (1985), Eastern Airlines, Inc. v. Floyd (1991), El Al Israel Airlines, Ltd. v. Tsui Yuan Tseng (1999) and Olympic Airways v. Husain (2004). These are the decisions courts elsewhere cite when they interpret the Warsaw and Montreal Conventions, and the translations let a Ukrainian judge or student read the reasoning itself rather than a summary of it.

Mainly the figures. The book gives the limit for death or bodily injury as revised in 2009. ICAO has revised the limits twice since: to 128,821 SDR from 28 December 2019, and to 151,880 SDR from 28 December 2024, with the limits for delay, baggage and cargo raised in step. The current figures are set out in our note on the Montreal Convention in Ukraine.

The conventions themselves have not been amended. The two-tier liability of the carrier, the “accident” test and priority in the Cape Town International Registry work as the book describes.

Tsirat A. Unification of the Rules of International Private Air Law: monograph. Kharkiv: Pravo, 2018. 472 pp. (in Ukrainian). ISBN 978-966-937-429-5.

Original title: Цірат Г. В. Уніфікація норм міжнародного приватного повітряного права : монографія. Харків : Право, 2018. 472 с.

Approved for publication by the Academic Council of the University of Modern Knowledge (minutes No. 5 of 5 May 2018). Reviewed by Dr O. Otradnova and Prof. I. Dikovska, both of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. The book is published here in full; it states the law as of 2018 and is not a substitute for advice on a specific matter.