Airline Injury Claims UK: How to Claim Compensation

At a glance

• Governing law for most airline injury claims: the Montreal Convention 1999, given force of law in England and Wales by the Carriage by Air Act 1961 (as amended) and the Carriage by Air Acts (Implementation of the Montreal Convention 1999) Order 2002.
• Time limit against the carrier: 2 years from the date of arrival, or the date the aircraft ought to have arrived, under Article 35 of the Convention — not the ordinary 3-year time limit under section 11 of the Limitation Act 1980.
• Domestic UK flights are included too: the Carriage by Air Acts (Application of Provisions) Order 2004 applies the same Convention-style regime, including the 2-year limit, to flights wholly within the UK — the 3-year Limitation Act period most people assume does not apply to a claim against the carrier.
• Strict liability threshold: 151,880 Special Drawing Rights (SDR) per passenger for accidents on or after 28 December 2024, under the Carriage by Air (Revision of Limits of Liability under the Montreal Convention) Order 2025.
• What is covered: bodily injury caused by an 'accident' — an unexpected or unusual event external to the passenger — on board the aircraft, or while embarking or disembarking.
• Psychiatric injury alone is generally not enough: the House of Lords confirmed in King v Bristow Helicopters Ltd [2002] that purely psychological injury, without an accompanying bodily injury, falls outside Article 17.
• A different claim, a different clock: an incident away from the boarding process (for example, in the terminal building well before check-in) is typically an airport operator's responsibility under ordinary negligence law, with the standard 3-year Limitation Act time limit, not the airline's 2-year Convention limit.

What is an airline injury claim?

An airline injury claim is a civil claim brought by a passenger against the air carrier for a bodily injury connected with air travel. Unlike most personal injury claims in England and Wales, which are governed by the common law of negligence and the Limitation Act 1980, a claim against the carrier itself is governed by an international treaty: the Montreal Convention 1999.

The Convention was given the force of law in the UK by the Carriage by Air Act 1961, as amended, and specifically implemented by the Carriage by Air Acts (Implementation of the Montreal Convention 1999) Order 2002. It applies to "international carriage" as the Convention defines it, and, importantly for UK travellers, it was extended to purely domestic UK flights by the Carriage by Air Acts (Application of Provisions) Order 2004. In practice, this means the great majority of flights a UK resident takes, whether a long-haul international trip or a short domestic hop, are governed by the same Convention-based framework when it comes to a claim against the carrier for an on-board or boarding-related injury.

The Convention imposes strict liability on the carrier, up to a set financial threshold, for accidents that take place on board the aircraft or during embarking or disembarking. Above that threshold, the carrier can still be liable, but it has a defence if it can show the injury was not caused by its negligence. Claims can cover medical costs, loss of earnings, travel expenses linked to the injury, and pain and suffering, always subject to the strict two-year time limit discussed below.

Two different regimes: know which one applies to you

The single most important thing to understand about an airline injury claim is that the legal regime depends on who you are claiming against and where the incident happened, not simply on whether you were "on a plane" in a loose sense.

| | Claim against the airline (Montreal Convention) | Claim against another party (ordinary negligence) | |---|---|---| | When it applies | Bodily injury from an accident on board, or while embarking or disembarking | Injury elsewhere, e.g. deep in the terminal, unconnected to the boarding process, or caused by a third party such as an airport operator or ground handler not acting for the airline | | Governing law | Montreal Convention 1999, via the Carriage by Air Act 1961 and the 2002 and 2004 Orders | Common law negligence; Occupiers' Liability Act 1957/1984 where relevant | | Time limit | 2 years from date of arrival (Article 35) | 3 years from the date of injury or date of knowledge, under section 11 of the Limitation Act 1980 | | Liability standard | Strict liability up to 151,880 SDR; fault-based defence above that | Claimant must prove negligence or breach of duty throughout | | Extension of time | Very limited — the Convention's own wording, not section 33 of the Limitation Act, governs whether a late claim can proceed | Court has discretion under section 33 of the Limitation Act 1980 to allow a late claim in some circumstances |

Getting this distinction wrong is the most common and most costly mistake passengers make. Someone who assumes they have "the usual three years" because they were injured while travelling can miss the Convention's two-year deadline entirely, extinguishing the claim before it is even issued. If you are at all unsure which regime applies, for example because the incident happened somewhere ambiguous like a jet bridge or an airport bus to the aircraft, treat the two-year Convention deadline as the one that matters and act well before it.

What counts as an 'accident' under Article 17

Article 17 of the Convention makes the carrier liable for bodily injury caused by an "accident" that took place on board the aircraft or in the course of embarking or disembarking. The Convention does not define "accident" exhaustively, but the settled interpretation, applied consistently by courts dealing with the Convention and its predecessor the Warsaw Convention, is that it means an unexpected or unusual event or happening that is external to the passenger.

Examples that typically qualify:

• A hot drink or food spilled on a passenger by cabin crew or a service trolley.
• A bag falling from an overhead locker during the flight or while it is being opened.
• A passenger struck by an unsecured item, or injured by a fault in cabin equipment such as a seat or tray table.
• A trip or fall caused by an unmarked hazard on the aircraft steps or jet bridge while boarding or leaving under the airline's control.

Examples that typically do not qualify:

• A pre-existing medical condition reacting to the ordinary, expected conditions of flight, such as cabin pressure changes affecting an existing ear or sinus problem, because the trigger is internal to the passenger rather than an external, unusual event.
• Ordinary turbulence within the normal range of flight, where nothing unusual or unexpected occurred, though a sudden and severe unexpected turbulence event causing injury may well qualify.

Where the Convention covers you: on board, embarking and disembarking

Article 17 liability is not limited to the time the aircraft is in the air. It also covers the process of embarking and disembarking, which UK and international case law has treated as extending to time spent on airbridges, aircraft steps, and the apron while passengers are moving to or from the aircraft under the airline's control, not merely the moment of stepping through the aircraft door.

Where the line is drawn matters, because it decides which of the two regimes in the table above applies. An incident that happens well inside the terminal building, in a departure lounge shop or a general walkway with no direct connection to the specific act of boarding a specific flight, is more likely to be the airport operator's responsibility under ordinary negligence law, carrying the three-year Limitation Act time limit rather than the Convention's two-year deadline. If your injury happened somewhere in between, for example on an airport transfer bus taking passengers directly to the aircraft, treat it as potentially Convention-governed and do not wait to find out.

Liability limits: strict liability up to a threshold, then a fault-based defence

Article 21 of the Convention splits liability into two bands:

1. Up to 151,880 SDR per passenger (the current threshold for accidents on or after 28 December 2024, set by the Carriage by Air (Revision of Limits of Liability under the Montreal Convention) Order 2025): the carrier cannot exclude or limit its liability at all. This is genuine strict liability — you do not need to prove the airline was negligent.
2. Above that threshold: the carrier remains liable for the full amount of proven damage, but it can avoid liability for the excess if it proves the damage was not due to its own negligence or that of its servants or agents, or that it was solely due to the negligence of a third party.

Special Drawing Rights are an International Monetary Fund accounting unit, not a currency you will see quoted day to day, and the sterling equivalent moves with exchange rates. Do not rely on an old conversion figure; check the current GBP equivalent before assessing where your claim sits relative to the threshold. The Convention's liability limits are reviewed roughly every five years under Article 24 of the Convention, so figures quoted in older articles or forum posts may already be out of date — the 151,880 SDR figure replaced 128,821 SDR from 28 December 2024.

What compensation can cover — and what it usually cannot

A successful claim can typically include:

• Medical costs and rehabilitation linked to the injury.
• Loss of earnings, both already incurred and reasonably anticipated.
• Reasonable travel and care costs caused by the injury.
• Pain, suffering and loss of amenity (general damages).

Psychiatric injury on its own is the significant exception. In King v Bristow Helicopters Ltd [2002] (a House of Lords decision on the equivalent wording in the earlier Warsaw Convention, applied consistently to Article 17 of the Montreal Convention), the House of Lords held that purely psychiatric injury or illness, without any accompanying bodily injury, does not fall within "bodily injury" and so is not recoverable against the carrier under the Convention. If a frightening incident, such as an emergency descent or an engine problem, causes psychological symptoms but no bodily injury at all, a Convention claim against the airline is unlikely to succeed for that alone. Where a genuine bodily injury or physical illness (for example, a stress-triggered physical condition) accompanies the psychiatric symptoms, the combined claim can succeed for the bodily element and the associated suffering.

Time limits: the point most passengers get wrong

Article 35 of the Convention fixes the limitation period at two years, running from the date the aircraft arrived at its destination, or the date it ought to have arrived, or the date the carriage stopped. This applies to a claim against the carrier, whether the flight was international or a purely domestic UK flight covered by the 2004 Order.

This is materially shorter, and materially less flexible, than the three-year period under section 11 of the Limitation Act 1980 that applies to an ordinary UK personal injury claim, for example against an airport operator, and which a court can extend in limited circumstances under section 33 of that Act. The Convention's own two-year rule does not carry that same discretionary safety net, so treat it as a hard deadline.

Worked example: Priya's connecting flight

Priya, a fictional passenger, is injured when a service trolley strikes her arm during the second leg of a connecting journey from Manchester to Singapore via Dubai, arriving in Singapore on 10 March. Because the injury happened on board an aircraft during international carriage, Article 17 of the Montreal Convention applies. The two-year Article 35 limitation period runs from 10 March, the date of arrival at the final destination, not the date of the injury itself and not the date of the connecting stop in Dubai. Priya has until 10 March two years later to bring a claim against the carrier, not three years as she initially assumed based on a general personal injury search.

Worked example: Tom's terminal slip

Tom, a fictional passenger, slips on a wet floor in a general airport concourse, an hour before his gate even opens, with no connection to boarding a specific flight. This is not "on board" or part of embarking or disembarking, so the Montreal Convention does not apply to a claim against the airline for this incident. Instead, any claim would ordinarily be against the airport operator under general negligence principles, subject to the standard three-year time limit under section 11 of the Limitation Act 1980, running from the date of the injury or Tom's date of knowledge if later.

Baggage-related injuries: a separate notice regime for the bag itself

If a piece of baggage causes your injury, for example a locker door striking you as it opens, keep the injury claim and any separate claim for the bag itself distinct. The injury claim runs on the Article 17/Article 35 framework described above, with no short notice requirement, only the two-year limit. A baggage damage or delay claim is a different, separate right under Article 31 of the Convention, and carries its own short notice periods: written notice of damage to checked baggage must reach the carrier within 7 days of receiving it, and notice of delayed baggage within 21 days of it being made available to you. Missing the baggage notice period does not affect your personal injury claim, but it will usually extinguish a separate claim for the bag.

Where to bring a claim

Article 33 of the Convention limits where a claim against the carrier can be brought, generally to: the carrier's domicile, its principal place of business, the place of business through which the contract of carriage was made, the place of destination, or, for death or bodily injury claims only, the passenger's principal and permanent residence, where the carrier operates flights to or from that country and conducts business from premises there. For most UK residents flying with airlines that serve the UK, England and Wales courts are typically available under one or more of these grounds.

For lower-value claims, proceedings can be started through the county court money claim service; see Make a court claim for money on GOV.UK. Higher-value or more complex claims, particularly those approaching or exceeding the strict-liability threshold, are usually issued in the High Court. Court fees and the appropriate track depend on the value and complexity of the claim — check current fees on GOV.UK before issuing.

Practical steps after an injury on a flight

1. Seek medical attention and keep records. Get treatment on board, at the destination, or as soon as you land. Ask for a copy of any medical report, keep receipts, and photograph visible injuries. These records tie the injury to the flight and support the medical evidence a Convention claim needs.
2. Report the incident to the airline in writing. Notify cabin crew while still on board if possible and ask them to log the event. Follow up with a written report to the airline, quoting your flight number, seat, date, and a factual description. An early written report makes it far harder for the carrier to dispute that something happened.
3. Gather evidence and witness details. Collect the names and contact details of fellow passengers who saw what happened, keep your boarding pass and booking confirmation, and note crew members' names where you can. Photographs of the scene, the aircraft condition, or the object involved can prove decisive if liability is contested later.
4. Work out which regime applies, and calendar the deadline immediately. If the incident happened on board, or during boarding or disembarking, treat the two-year Article 35 deadline from the date of arrival as your hard cut-off. If it happened elsewhere in the airport, the claim may instead run on the three-year Limitation Act clock against a different party — but confirm this rather than assuming it.
5. Submit a formal claim and negotiate. Write to the airline setting out the facts, the injuries, and the losses you are claiming, attaching supporting documents. Many cases settle through correspondence, but if the carrier denies liability or offers too little, court proceedings may be needed before the two-year deadline expires. Consider taking guidance well before that deadline, not in the final weeks.

Common mistakes and pitfalls

• Assuming the standard three-year personal injury limit applies. It rarely does against the carrier, whatever the flight's origin. Treat the two-year Article 35 deadline as your working assumption unless you have confirmed otherwise.
• Leaving the claim until close to two years, then finding evidence has gone stale. Witnesses move, memories fade, and airlines may no longer hold cabin crew rosters or maintenance logs for older flights. Report and gather evidence early even if you plan to negotiate for a while before issuing a claim.
• Confusing "accident" with "anything unpleasant that happened." Turbulence within the normal range, or a passenger's own condition reacting to ordinary flight conditions, is unlikely to meet the Article 17 test, however distressing it felt at the time.
• Pursuing a pure psychological injury claim against the airline with no accompanying bodily injury. Following King v Bristow Helicopters Ltd, this is very unlikely to succeed under the Convention, however genuine the psychological impact.
• Mixing up the baggage notice deadlines with the injury deadline. A missed 7-day or 21-day baggage notice does not affect a personal injury claim, but conflating the two can cause needless panic or, worse, needless delay to the claim that does have a strict deadline.

This guide provides general information about how airline injury claims work under the law of England and Wales. It is not legal advice and is not a substitute for advice tailored to your specific circumstances. The law described was accurate as at July 2026 and is subject to change, including periodic revision of the Convention's liability limits — always check GOV.UK and legislation.gov.uk for the most current position.

Last reviewed: July 2026 by a non-practising solicitor · Next review due: July 2027 or on legislative change.