The Legal Framework of Flight Delay Compensation
Compensation for flight delay rests on those norms of the Air Code that govern the obligations and liability of the carrier. In international and domestic carriage, the obligations of the certificate holder are determined in accordance with the Montreal Convention of 28 May 1999 on the unification of certain rules for international carriage by air, Georgia's other international treaties, the Code, the Civil Code and the normative acts of the Agency. In case of delay in the carriage of the passenger and/or baggage, the obligations of the certificate holder are determined specifically by a normative act of the Agency — the document that contains the detailed list of the passenger's rights on delay.
Termination of the Contract and Duties of Care
Classifying the delay is the first analytical step of the case: a postponed departure, a cancelled flight or a terminated contract each carry a different legal qualification. The Code names two grounds of termination — safety and the avoidance of breach of normative requirements — and whether the particular cause falls within that list is the question to be answered before the claim. Force majeure circumstances are a separate test: they release from the duty only where the duty cannot be performed, or is performed improperly, owing to them.
The Code allows the carrier to terminate the contract where this is necessary to secure the safety of the flight or to avoid breach of the requirements of the normative acts of the state of departure, landing or transfer — apart from the cases established by the Civil Code. Such termination is one of the lawful causes of delay; in parallel, the carrier is released from the performance of the respective duties where, owing to circumstances caused by force majeure, it cannot perform them or performs them improperly. From the passenger's perspective, these two rules together decide when a ground for claiming compensation exists and when it does not.