The employer, acting through a travel agency, purchased flight tickets for two of its employees to travel on business between Vilnius (Lithuania) and Baku (Azerbaijan), via Riga (Latvia) and Moscow (Russia). The employees left Vilnius and arrived in Riga on schedule but the following flight left Riga and landed in Moscow behind schedule. Consequently, they missed their next flight. The carrier put them on another flight, which left Moscow and arrived in Baku one day later than originally scheduled. Since the delay extended the time of their official business travel by over 14 hours, the employer paid them travel expenses and state social security contributions, as it was required to do under Lithuanian legislation. The employer then sought to be compensated for that amount from the air carrier which refused to do so. The First District Court of the City of Vilnius ordered the carrier to pay the compensation sought. The carrier appealed against that judgment to the Regional Court, Vilnius, which dismissed the appeal. The air carrier appealed to the Supreme Court of Lithuania which stayed the proceedings and referred questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling asking, inter alia, whether articles 19, 22 and 29 of the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air (1999) (“the Montreal Convention”) meant that an air carrier which concluded a contract of international carriage with an employer of persons carried as passengers was liable to that employer for damage occasioned by a delay in flights on which its employees were passengers pursuant to that contract, on account of which the employer incurred additional expenditure.
Held that given the wording and context of article 19 of the Montreal Convention, it was applicable not only to the damage suffered by a passenger but also to the damage suffered by a person in its capacity as an employer having concluded a contract of international carriage with an air carrier for the purpose of carriage of passengers who are its employees; but that since liability was limited “for each passenger”, the amount of damages which could be awarded to the person who brought proceedings for compensatory damages resulting from a delay in the international carriage of passengers could not exceed the amount obtained by multiplying the limit laid down in article 22(1) of the Montreal Convention by the number of passengers carried under the contract concluded by that person and the air carrier or carriers concerned; that a compensation arrangement was liable to strike an equitable balance between the various interests present. Under the limitation provided for in article 22(1) of the Montreal Convention, the employer who purchased the tickets persons were placed in a position which was neither more nor less favourable than that of passengers who themselves suffered damage as a result of a delay; and that accordingly, articles 19, 22 and 29 of The Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air, concluded at Montreal on 28 May 1989 meant that an air carrier which had concluded a contract of international carriage with an employer of persons carried as passengers, was liable to the employer for damage occasioned by a delay in flights on which its employees were passengers pursuant to that contract, on account of which the employer incurred additional expenditure (paras 46–54, operative part).
I Jansons, M Freimane and E Matulionytė for the air carrier; D Kriaučiūnas and A Svinkūnaitė, agents, for the Lithuanian Government; T Henze , J Möller and J Kemper, agents, for the German Government; D Colas and M-L Kitamura, agents, for the French Government; L Skolmeistare and I Kalniņš, agents, for the Latvian Government; A Steiblytė, N Yerrell and J Jokubauskaitė, agents, for the European Commission.