Air Travel Claims: A Guide To Rights and Responsibilities

Have your travel arrangements turned out to be different from what your travel agent or tour operator told you? Did your luggage get lost or damaged or have you been injured or inconvenienced by something that's happened when travelling by air or at an airport, even during check-in, immigration or security controls? Have you suffered loss from what airlines do; from selling you air travel to looking after you during your flight? Or maybe you've been injured or your property has been damaged by aircraft operating near or flying over your home?

Then this book can help you. It talks about the law, which is sometimes complicated; but this book is designed to be read by ordinary people, especially consumers of air travel services, although professionals and students in the aviation, tourism and travel industries may benefit from it as well. Everyone needs a better idea of their rights and responsibilities under the existing legal system.

Although this book focusses on the international and domestic air travel claims situation in Australia and New Zealand, quite a bit of it will apply in other countries as well. It endeavours to make sense of a complicated system of rules and contractual arrangements that affect the rights and responsibilities of travellers, as well as the duties and obligations of the air travel industry and related entities such as airport management and border security. It will be helpful to ordinary people who get caught up with airlines and other organisations involved in the air travel industry, especially if those people want to make a claim for compensation when they suffer some kind of loss or when they are injured by something occurring during or in connection with air travel.

Dr Gary Heilbronn has been researching, teaching, writing about and consulting on aviation and travel law for over three decades in Australia, Asia and Europe. He has been a practising lawyer, law professor and consultant in aviation law. He has written and contributed to several text books, many articles, conference papers and other media events on various aspects of aviation law, travel law and litigation internationally and in Australia. He has written, amongst other books, the seminal reference text on Travel and Tourism Law in Australia and New Zealand (The Federation Press, 1992) and "Air Travel Claims" in Australia and New Zealand (2016)