ABSTRACT
Introduction The law relating to the international carriage by air of cargo, passengers and luggage is to be found in two distinct sources: (1) Montreal Convention 1999 1 and (2) a network of legal instruments commonly known as the Warsaw system. 2 The Montreal Convention 1999 is largely a tidying up exercise of the fragmentation of law found in the Warsaw system, examined in the following section. It consolidates and modernises the Warsaw system where needed and refl ects the liability scheme adopted by the Warsaw Convention as amended by the Hague Protocol as further amended by Montreal Additional Protocol No.4. A knowledge of the Warsaw system is, therefore, necessary to understand the liability scheme adopted by the Montreal Convention, besides providing guidance on how the provisions of this new Convention are likely to be interpreted by the courts. Further, it must be noted that not all parties to the various instruments found in the Warsaw system have as yet ratifi ed the Montreal Convention. Hence, a carriage by air from a state that has ratifi ed the Montreal Convention to a state that is a party to the Warsaw Convention 1929 will be governed by the latter. 3 This chapter, therefore, starts with an examination of the Warsaw system.
