United Airlines Liability and Limitation

Liability for irregularity in Schedule: In case of delay, misconnection or cancellation of flights, the UA can either fly the passenger on its own flight to his/her destination or fly on same class on another carrier if length of stay exceed 2 hours provided passenger requests for same. However, there is also a provision for providing the refunds in case the passenger does not want to fly on next flight or on another carrier.

For death and bodily injury sustained by the passenger In case of international carriage, the amount of liability will be 1,13,100 SDRs for each passenger and to that extent the carrier will not exclude or limit its liability. However, if damages exceed this amount, the carrier will not be liable to pay if it proves that the damage was not due to its own act of omission/commission or negligence and also that this act of omission/commission and negligence is done by a third party. There is also a provision for payment of the advance compensation in these cases and its quantum is to be fixed by the carrier. However, in case of death of a person, this advance payment shall not be less than 16000 SDRs.

For damages related to delay in carriage of passengers, the Montreal Convention applies with respect to limits of liability up to 4694 SDRs per passenger. There is no such limit to liability in case of Warsaw Convention.

Destruction, loss, delay in carriage and damage to the checked and the unchecked baggage limits the liability to 1131 SDRs per passenger whether the Montreal Convention or the Warsaw Convention applies. This limit to liability will not apply if the passenger had made a value declaration of more than this sum. However, in cases where the United flights are operating within USA, the carrier will be required to pay USD 3400 per ticketed passenger for loss, destruction or damage to the checked baggage or personal property.