Common use of The 1971 Guatemala City Conference Clause in Contracts

The 1971 Guatemala City Conference. In 1971, a suggestion was made to delete the word ‘accident’ and to replace Article 17 with the following text in the 1971 Guatemala City Protocol: The carrier is liable for damage sustained in case of death or personal injury of a passenger upon condition only that the event which caused the death or inju- ry took place on board the aircraft or in the course of any of the operations of embarking or disembarking. However, the carrier is not liable if the death or injury resulted solely from the state of health of the passenger […].27 (italics added) As suggested by Austria, this change aimed to widen the carrier’s scope of liability: 25 See, for example, ICAO Doc 7686, International Conference on Private Air Law, The Hague, September 1955, volume I, Minutes, Montreal September 1956, p. 86, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 162; ICAO Doc 7686, International Conference on Private Air Law, The Hague, September 1955, volume II, Documents, Montreal September 1956, p. 96 with respect to the revision of the limits of liability: ‘Another argument in support of this view was that the record of air safety had vastly improved since 1929 and therefore the carrier is now involved in lower risks than those prevailing in the earlier days of air transportation development, and consequently should be prepared to pay higher amounts on the fewer occasions of accidents’.