Warsaw Convention
1929 treaty governing commercial aviation liability
The Convention for the Unification of certain rules relating to international carriage by air, commonly known as the Warsaw Convention, is an international convention which regulates liability for international carriage of persons, luggage, or goods performed by aircraft for reward.
Originally signed in 1929 in Warsaw (hence the name), it was amended in 1955 at The Hague, Netherlands, and in 1971 in Guatemala City, Guatemala. United States courts have held that, at least for some purposes, the Warsaw Convention is a different instrument from the Warsaw Convention as amended by the Hague Protocol.
The Montreal Convention, signed in 1999, replaced the Warsaw Convention system in countries ratifying it.
History
On 17 August 1923, the French government proposed the convening of a diplomatic conference In November 1923 for the purpose of concluding a convention relating to liability in international carriage by air. The conference was formally deferred on two occasions due to reluctant behavior of the governments of various nations to act on such a short notice without the knowledge of the proposed convention. Finally, between 27 October and 6 November, the first conference met in Paris to study the draft convention. Since most of the participants were diplomats accredited to the French government and not professionals, it was agreed unanimously that a body of technical, legal experts be set up to study the draft convention prior to its submission to the diplomatic conference for approval. Accordingly, the International Technical Committee of Legal Experts on Air Questions (Comité International Technique d’Experts Juridiques Aériens, CITEJA) was formed in 1925. In 1927–28 CITEJA studied and developed the proposed draft convention and developed it into the present package of unification of law and presented it at the Warsaw Conference, where it was approved between 4 and 12 October 1929.
The public source identifies “Warsaw Convention” as 1929 treaty governing commercial aviation liability. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Warsaw, Convention and treaty.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1349575. VIAF identifies the subject as 182309128. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1929, 1955, 1971 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Warsaw Convention” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.