You were hurt on an international flight. You went looking for your rights and found a treaty with a number attached to it, and the number looked like a ceiling. Most people stop reading there, which is roughly what the number is for.

Does the Montreal Convention Limit What I Can Recover?

No. It does closer to the reverse. The treaty sets a threshold, and below that threshold the airline is not permitted to argue that it was not at fault. Not unlikely to win on fault. Not allowed to raise it. Above the threshold the airline can defend itself by proving it took all reasonable measures to avoid the harm, and if it cannot prove that, there is no cap on what it owes.

So the figure works as a floor under your recovery rather than a ceiling over it. For a passenger with a fractured wrist and eight weeks of lost work, the treaty hands over the hardest part of an ordinary injury case, which is proving that somebody was careless. For a passenger with a catastrophic injury, the treaty does not limit the claim at all. It just puts the burden of explanation on the airline instead of on you.

Airlines are not lying when they call it a limit. The provision does contain a figure. But a passenger who reads that figure and concludes their claim is worth that much at most has it backwards, and that single misreading is the most common reason a good claim never gets made.

Does the Treaty Apply to My Flight?

It applies to international carriage, and the test is the itinerary you bought, not the leg where you got hurt.

If your ticket took you from Los Angeles to Istanbul and back, the whole journey is international carriage, including a domestic connection sold as part of that booking. If you bought a Sacramento to Los Angeles ticket separately and then a second ticket onward, the first one is probably domestic carriage governed by California law, with a different standard and a different deadline. Two trips that look identical from the seat can be governed by entirely different law depending on how they were sold. If you are not sure which kind of ticket you bought, send us the booking confirmation and we can tell you which law governs your flight.

Both countries also have to be parties to the treaty, which in practice covers the United States and nearly every country a passenger reaches here on a scheduled flight.

The last boundary is physical. The treaty covers injury on board the aircraft and during the process of embarking or disembarking, which includes the jetway. It does not cover a fall in the terminal on the way to your gate. That is an ordinary premises claim against whoever runs the airport, a different case entirely, and if a public entity operates the airport the deadline is dramatically shorter.

The One Word That Decides Most of These Cases

The treaty makes the airline liable for injury caused by an accident. That word carries more weight here than any other, and it does not mean what it means in conversation.

An accident is an unexpected or unusual event external to the passenger. External is the operative word. Clear-air turbulence that throws you into the ceiling is external. An overhead bin that opens in flight and drops a bag on your shoulder is external. Scalding coffee handed across your lap is external. Crew inaction in the face of a passenger in visible distress can qualify too, on the theory that the failure to act is itself the unusual event, though that version is argued rather than assumed.

What generally is not an accident is your own body. A clot that forms on a fourteen-hour flight, a cardiac event at altitude, a back that gives out as you stand: these have been difficult claims, because the airline's answer is that the passenger's own condition surfaced during an ordinary flight rather than that the flight did something to them. The same goes for the routine conditions of air travel. Normal cabin pressure, a seat that is too small, a flight that is too long.

If you are trying to work out whether you have a claim, start here rather than with the money. Nearly every contested case in this area is an argument about whether something was an accident, and a passenger who cannot point to an external event usually does not win one.

What injures passengers

Which Injuries Are Accidents, and Which Ones the Airline Will Fight

Nearly every contested case is an argument about whether something was an accident. These are the injuries that come up most.

Overhead Bin and Falling Baggage

A bin that opens in flight and drops a bag on your shoulder. External, and the clearest case the treaty was written for.

Hot Liquid and the Service Cart

Scalding coffee handed across your lap, or a cart striking a shoulder in the aisle. External.

Turbulence

Clear-air turbulence that throws you into the ceiling is external. Whether the belt sign was on usually matters.

Jetway and Airstairs Falls

Inside the treaty, because embarking and disembarking are part of the carriage.

A Fall Inside the Terminal

Outside it. A premises claim against the airport under local law, often on a much shorter deadline. Do not let it sit.

Clots, Cardiac Events, and Back Injuries

The hard category. The airline's answer is that your own condition surfaced on an ordinary flight, and it has been difficult to overcome.

Two Years, and the Clock Does Not Stop

You have two years from the date the aircraft arrived, or should have arrived, or the date the journey stopped. That deadline behaves differently from an ordinary statute of limitations. It is written as a condition on the right to sue at all, so the arguments that normally rescue a late filing generally do not work on it.

The practical danger is the airline's own claims process. A passenger reports the injury, gets a case number, exchanges email with customer relations for a year, receives an offer of a travel voucher, declines it, goes back and forth for another eight months, and then learns that none of it paused anything. Negotiating with an airline does not extend the deadline. Neither does an open internal file, ongoing treatment, or a promise that someone senior will review it.

If you are inside two years and the airline is still reviewing, treat the date on your boarding pass as a wall and work backwards from it.

What the Treaty Takes Away

This is the part airlines have no need to spin, because it genuinely favors them.

For international carriage the treaty is the only remedy. There is no parallel California negligence claim running alongside it, and you cannot get one by pleading around the treaty. The treaty also compensates loss and nothing else. No punitive damages, however badly the airline behaved, and nothing for outrage as its own category.

That has a consequence worth stating plainly. If what happened to you was infuriating but cost you very little, the treaty has no mechanism for it. A claim here is built out of actual losses: treatment, lost income, a documented injury with a before and an after. We have told people that what happened to them was genuinely wrong and that there is still no claim in it. Those two things are not in conflict.

What to Do This Week

One. Find the booking, not the boarding pass. You want the document that shows the full itinerary, because it decides whether the treaty governs and which airline you actually have a contract with.

Two. Write down what happened while you still remember the sequence, and be specific about the external event. What moved, what fell, what was handed to you, who you told, what they said. A passenger's own account written within days is often the strongest document in the file.

Three. Get the injury seen by a physician now rather than when it worsens. The gap between the flight and the first medical record is the argument every airline makes.

Four. Do not take a voucher in exchange for signing anything.

Where the Case Would Be Heard

One question arrives right behind this one: whether someone in California can sue a foreign airline here at all, or has to pursue it in the airline's home country. The treaty addresses it directly, and several factors determine the answer on any particular trip. That is its own subject, and we walk through the factors in where you can sue a foreign airline. If you want the answer for your own itinerary, that is something we can review with you.

If the treaty applies and the injury is real and documented, these claims are worth evaluating properly, and the evaluation costs nothing. If you are past two years, or what happened was unpleasant rather than injurious, we would rather tell you that now than take a year to arrive at it.