The “Montreal convention of 1999” (MC99) regulation is going to be applicable from Mid-December by this year in Nepal also.
After the convention comes into practice, the insurance of Nepali air passenger will be valued to 160,000 US Dollars. Currently, the insurance of air passenger is just 20 thousand US Dollars.
Cabinet’s Economic and Infrastructure committee unanimously approved the draft bill tabled by the Tourism Ministry around couple of months back making Nepal allied to the convention.
There are some rules and provisions to be integrated as per ICAO and the details of the convention being approved by the cabinet has already been reported to ICAO. The convention will be implemented in around 60 days after informing ICAO.
After the implementation of the convention, air carriers will be legally responsible only for the sustained damage in case of death or bodily injury of a passenger if the accident took place on board or in case of death or bodily injury of a passenger.
The carrier is liable to pay $8,300 per passenger for the death or injury in the agreement of Warsaw convention but later this was replaced by The Hague Protocol which amended the Warsaw Convention. The limit prescribed by the amendment is $20,000 per passenger while the MC99 imposes a minimum liability of nearly $113,000 Special Drawing Rights, equivalent to $169,000, for each passenger.
After the implementation of the convention, Nepalese airlines companies operating internationally and other insurance companies must increase their insurance amount in case of air passengers. Also one can claim compensation of the death and injury during international flights and also damage to the cargo.
The Montreal convention was introduced in May of 1999 and was globally implemented from November of 2003. There are around 191 countries under ICAO and Nepal will be the 131 member country to implement the convention.
There was huge controversy and delay in distribution of insurance amount to US-Bangla air crash victim family as Nepal had not signed the convention back then.
