Aviation Disputes & Aviation Regulation & Commercial
Advise and represent financiers, lessors, airlines, operators and owners on contentious issues concerning:
• Finance, operating and wet leases
• Pre-delivery and redelivery of aircraft
• MROs, suppliers and operational partners
• Airports, slots coordinator and ANSPs
Advise airlines and operators on regulatory issues concerning:
• Licencing, approvals and operational requirements
• Air operations and airworthiness
• Airport slots and traffic rights
• Consumer protection and passenger rights
• Advertising and ‘greenwashing’
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Disputes: Finance, operating and wet leases
- Lessee / borrower defaults, including claims for outstanding rent, maintenance reserves, security deposit, indemnities, and under guarantees.
- Grounding, termination of leasing, and repossession of aircraft and engines following the occurrence of events of default.
- Restructuring and insolvency, including the Cape Town Convention remedies.
- Shop visits of engines, APUs and landing gears, and airframe C-Checks and structural repairs, including whether they qualify for reimbursement from accrued maintenance reserves / lessor maintenance contribution.
Disputes: Pre-delivery and redelivery of aircraft
- Pre-delivery payment (PDP) financing, sale and leaseback transactions, step in rights under aircraft purchase agreements, OEM delivery and passenger-to-freighter (P2F) conversion delays, including excusable and non-excusable delays.
- Compliance with return conditions, holdover rent, aircraft documents (including back-to-birth traceability), buy-out of redelivery conditions, return acceptance certificates, and de-registration and export.
Disputes: MROs, suppliers and operational partners
- Work performed by maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) organisations, including whether costs within / excluded from NTE caps, liens (right of retention) asserted by MROs for alleged outstanding amounts, and threat to part-out / sell the aircraft.
- Manufacturing and production faults / defects, compliance with type certification and initial and continuing airworthiness concerns.
- Airport services agreements, grounding handling contracts, de-icing equipment maintenance contracts, and other supplier contracts, including under performance, complex payment reconciliation mechanisms, and exercise of termination rights.
Disputes: Airports, slots coordinator and ANSPs
- Airport and grounding handling fees and charges, including discriminatory pricing and state aid.
- Challenging sanctions and fines imposed by airport slots coordinator for alleged operation at times significantly different from allocated slots.
- Challenging air navigation charges imposed by ANSPs, and their failure to adequately resource and manage provision of ATC services.
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Regulation: Licensing, approvals and operational requirements
- Establishing subsidiary airline in the UK (including foreign ownership shareholding rules), foreign carrier permits, operating licences, air operator certificates, wet-lease in approvals.
- Flight and cabin crew and maintenance personnel licences, ramp inspections.
- Restructuring of Part-145 maintenance network in UK and across the EU.
Transportation of dangerous goods by air.
Regulation: Air operations and airworthiness
- Air operations and initial and continuing airworthiness requirements, including alternative means of compliance (AltMoCs), acceptable means of compliance (AMCs) and guidance materials (GMs).
- Continuing airworthiness management expositions (CAMEs), operation manuals, leasing manuals and white-lists.
- Airworthiness directives (ADs), service bulletins (SBs), and engineering orders (EOs).
Regulation: Airport slots and traffic rights
- Slots allocation and trading (transfers and swaps / exchanges), slot compliance monitoring and misuse of slots.
- Air traffic management issues.
- Route licenses, and impact of sanctions.
Regulation: Consumer protection and passenger rights
- Enforcement actions brought by Court Enforcement Agents, the UK Civil Aviation Authority (UK CAA), and EU Consumer Protection Network.
- Passenger compensation, including obligation to refund and pay damages for delays, denied boarding, and injury suffered.
- Disruptive passenger (DPAX) incidents, including associated civil and criminal actions.
- Conditions of carriage and booking terms, including misleading or unfair commercial practices that impact enforceability.
- Compliance with evolving EU and UK consumer protection regulations, including drip-pricing, no-show policies, and subscriptions terms.
Regulation: Advertising and ‘greenwashing’
- Proposed advertising campaigns, including compliance with advertising standards and codes, and approvals from Clearcast.
- Investigations brought by UK Advertising Standards Authority into alleged misleading campaigns, notably, in respect of airlines’ sustainability initiatives / ‘green’ credentials.
