Legal Issues in the Aviation Industry

Legal Issues in the Aviation Industry

Christopher S Wells

University of Maryland

3 March 2013

Abstract

Compared to any other transportation form the public’s focus is beyond all other lying on the aviation sector. While working together as a team and creating and launching a new airplane type – like the Airbus A380 – together in order to, later on, vaunt themselves with them being ‘the first to fly the A380’ and being a step ahead of their competitors, airplane manufacturers and airlines are also facing huge legal problems going along with late deliveries of ordered planes or grounded planes due to safety issues. The topic becomes especially volatile if an airplane crashes where most of the time a large amount of fatalities has to be recorded. While trying to find out what actually caused the accident in order to not let something like this happen again, airlines, airplane manufacturers and even flight crews, air traffic controllers and aviation maintenance staffs are faced with damage and compensation claims, claims for punitive damages and even with criminal prosecution. Drawing a line between intentional negligence versus unintentional errors and appropriate compensation versus making money off of human disasters is difficult and varies from case to case. This paper will – amongst others – briefly point out Airbus’ history concerning the introduction of its new A380 as well as deal with the mass torts filed in a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 crash in the 1970s also involving the question of criminalization of aviation.

1. Major cause of the problem

In today’s fast moving globalized world it is necessary to have a well-functioning air traffic system. The requirements for such a system are growing, thus the potential for issues is increasing as well. With rising oil prices and dropping spending capacities of potential passengers, airlines are forced to rethink and reorganize the products they...