It is a quirk of air travel that an International Convention known as the Warsaw Convention (also known as the Montreal Convention) both gives and takes away rights to claim compensation.
It gives air passengers rights to claim compensation without requiring them to prove that the airline was at fault. All an air passenger needs to prove is that they were injured, or a family member was killed, or their bags were lost, and they will have a claim.
It takes away air passenger rights to claim full compensation for injury, and their family members rights to claim full compensation for death, by limiting the amount to $725,000 and $1,600 for lost baggage (in Australia, to and from Australia).
Equally as importantly, there are time limits for making claims. Claims for damaged baggage must be made within 7 days, claims for lost baggage must be made within 21 days. For injury or death claims, the time limit is 2 years.
Two years can pass quickly - too quickly as the Stephensons found out. In their case, their husband / father was killed when a helicopter in which he was a passenger struck a power line, flipped and crashed. They made a workers compensation claim upon the employer, the Parkes Shire Council, but left it for 3 years before they made a claim under the Warsaw Convention.
The High Court of Australia has ruled that the Stephensons rights to claim compensation of up to $500,000 each under the Warsaw Convention had been extinguished because they failed to bring their claim within two years.
For my case note, click on: