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Our roots in the Aviation law are very deep:  started over 30 years ago and covering almost every field of it. More specifically we are dealing with rules and regulations of the Montreal Convention, the Warsaw Convention, the IATA (International Air Transport Association) Regulations and Resolutions Procedures and also the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) Proceedings.

We are proud to be one of the few aviation law firms in Europe (if not the only one!)  to deal with disputes of travel agencies working with the  International Air Transport Association. IATA represents most scheduled airlines world’s airlines, some 265 carriers or 83% of the total air traffic. IATA manages a worldwide electronic ticketing system called the Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP) which allows for reservation, sale and payment of air plane tickets by travel agencies around the world. This is a very complex system as, at the close of 2014, there were BSP operations in 181 countries and territories. The system currently serves 400 participating airlines with an on-time settlement rate of 99.98%. In 2014, IATA's BSP processed $255.7 billion.

ELC was involved with this complex issue several times, mostly representing travel agencies which were accredited by IATA to issue ticket online through its BSP ticketing system. 

In particular, we have successfully defended travel agents from Denmark, the U.K. the U.S. and Greece  on their issues with IATA in front of the Travel Agency Commissioner (an internal arbitration proceedings under IATA Regulation) and also on arbitration proceedings under the ICC Rules.

As a founding member of the Global justice Network (GJN), our law firm participated in the GJN Spring Conference which was held in Madrid on May 26-28 , 2016. It was a very successful event where over 40 participants took part in,essentially  focusing on the Volkswagen collective claims issue. Two out of our three US partner law firms were retained from the US Judge for representing concerned American VW owners in class action. In Europe where unfortunately such legal tool does not exist claiming the consumer's rights is more difficult and in any case fairly complicated.This difference in our legal systems could well be behind the motivation of the giant German manufacturer to announce that it intends to indemnify American concerned VW owners but not the European ones. Nevertheless the plaintiff law firms members of the GJN with a solid proven record on such issues have pioneered the way of attempting to protect European consumers through an interesting legal possibility that exists only in the Netherlands where we also have a major law firm as a founding partner and have established along with the other members of our network a stichting (foundation) under the acronym CLEAN so as to participate in a collective claim, for and on behalf of European concerned VW owners who were affected by the fraud. So much is to be seen within the forthcoming months during which all concerned European consumers are invited to join the action without any obligation of their part.

In addition to the VW diesel issue , the event offered workshops on financial litigation, human rights and pharmaceutical and medical devices. ELC's partner Constantin Kokkinos who is honored to be part of GJN's executive committee intervened on several topics during that conference on the VW Diesel issue as well as on cross border financial litigation matters.  

We are very saddened to hear of our GJN treasurer and collegue 's loss, Brian O'Reilly.

We will sorely miss his sense of humour, honesty and efficiency.

Our prayers and thoughts are with his family during this difficult time

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Our lawyers are taking part in GJN’s Spring 2016 Conference which is held in Madrid, Spain. It focuses on cross border litigation and offers workshops on financial litigation, human rights and pharmaceutical and medical devices. A panel composed by lawyers from 15 different nationalities including our American colleagues from Lieff Cabraiser, Keller Rohrback and Jack Russo are also discussing about Volkswagen “Clean Diesel” litigation, focusing on the evolution of the case in the US where things are moving quicker and more efficient than in Europe.