Hi!
A couple of points to make.
Musicians have been moving their very nice Fenders & Gibsons all over the world in good strong boxes since aeroplanes were invented.
As a musician, I can say yes, we have.
But the amount of times, I've retrieved an instrument at reclaim and found either it, or the case(re-enforced flight case) smashed beggars belief. A very close friend of mine has to date, had 2 guitars(up to $2000 value!) and 4 cases smashed on him by different airlines. Unfortunatly, damage still occurs even if there is proper casing around the item, which makes me wonder, how the hell are they causing the damage to these cases? There's a running joke among a lot of musicians over here, that when a baggage handler sees a flight case, he sees it as a challenge!!
Secondly, with passengers rights and the Warsaw convention. Please if I have anything wrong here, let me know. But, after having a good read of it and a couple of arguments with some airline companies, this is my understanding.
And they must sign a "LIMITED RELEASE TAG" Thus taking LIABILTY away from the airline for any damage caused..........................................
Under the Warsaw convention, this is null and void.
Article 23
#109
Any provision tending to relieve the carrier of liability or to fix a lower limit than that which is laid down in this Convention shall be null and void, but the nullity of any such provision does not involve the nullity of the whole contract, which shall remain subject to the provisions of this Convention. #110
I think the way some carriers get around this is by transferring the liability to the ground handler. With FR, I think it changes beetween different airports. On some, they have they're own handlers(or did have a couple of years ago) and on others they sub-contract to a ground handler.
If it was FR's own handlers, then the cue should be covered under the warsaw convention, which means that he won't get much back with the weight of a snooker cue being what it is.
However, under the Warsaw convention, it states :
Article 25
#114
1. The carrier shall not be entitled to avail himself of the provisions of this Convention which exclude or limit his liability, if the damage is caused by his wilful misconduct or by such default on his part as, in accordance with the law of the Court seised of the case, is considered to be equivalent to wilful misconduct. #115
2. Similarly the carrier shall not be entitled to avail himself of the said provisions, if the damage is caused as aforesaid by any agent of the carrier acting within the scope of his employment. #116
So, if he can prove, in court or through the carriers own acceptance, that the handlers were negligent, then he can claim for the full price of either replacing the item or repairing the item.
As regards the loss of earnings, I would think that it would be a civil action outside the scope of the convention and so, it wouldn't apply.
I think that's the way it goes.
Hope this makes things a bit clearer.
Cheers!
Paul.
PS....Please don't think that I'm FR bashing, the only reason I used the snooker cue as a reference was because it was the thread topic