Civil Compensation System of General Aviation in China

With the continuous development of China's general aviation industry in recent years, the defects of its legal regulations in the field of civil damage compensation have become increasingly obvious. The legal system of general aviation in China is constituted by laws, administrative regulations, departmental rules and administrative normative documents. In comparison with the civil compensation system of general aviation in US which is centered on product tort liability, the compensation system of China focuses on both contract liability and tort liability:victims may request compensation basing on the claim for breach of contract or the claim for tort damages and have to choose one under the circumstance that both of them can be applied. By comparing the existing regulations with the relevant provisions of the Montreal Convention, the drawbacks of the existing regulations can be concluded into three aspects:the imperfection of the liability principle, the lack of provisions for compensation limit, and the excessively narrow scope of the application of compulsory liability insurance. Accordingly, the principle of liability is required to be transferred from no-fault liability to presumed liability and strict liability, the system of liability limit should be introduced to the present regulations, and the application scope of aviation liability insurance is supposed to be expanded in the general aviation part of Civil Aviation Law.