AIR BALTIC CORPORATION AS V LIETUVOS RESPUBLIKOS SPECIALIUJU TYRIMU TARNYBA

Case C-429/14, Court of Justice of the European Union, 17 February 2016

Air transport - Liability of air carrier in the event of delay in the international carriage of passengers - Contract of carriage concluded by the passengers' employer - Damage caused by delay - Damage suffered by the employer - Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air (the Montreal Convention), in particular articles 19, 22 and 29

The Lithuanian Investigation Service purchased flight tickets for two of its agents to travel on official business from Vilnius (Lithuania) to Baku (Azerbaijan), via Riga (Latvia) and Moscow (Russia). The agents were to leave Vilnius at 09.55 on 16 January 2011 and arrive in Baku at 22.40 on the same day. The carrier on the flights from Vilnius to Moscow would be Air Baltic. Late departure from Riga caused the two passengers to miss the flight from Moscow to Baku, extending the time of their official business travel by over 14 hours, as a result of which the Investigation Service incurred additional expenses for travel and social security contributions. Air Baltic declined to compensate for those expenses. In subsequent litigation before Lithuanian courts, the Supreme Court referred the question to the CJEU of whether a legal person was entitled to compensation under the Montreal Convention. This was the response to that question, in which the Court of Justice of the European Union held that articles 19, 22 and 29 of the Montreal Convention must be interpreted as meaning that an air carrier that has concluded a contract of international carriage with an employer of persons carried as passengers is liable to that employer for damage occasioned by a delay in flights on which its employees were passengers pursuant to the contract of carriage, where the delay gave rise to additional expenditure for the employer. The lack of mention of damage suffered by the employer of passengers was not intended to exclude such persons from the scope of the Convention. While the claims of the employer might be higher than those of the individual passengers, the cumulative limitation for each passenger under article 22 of the Montreal Convention prevented excessive claims.