Cite as: 525 U. S. 155 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
traveler." Minutes 264; see Saks, 470 U. S., at 401. In the later draft that prescribed what is now Article 17, airline liability was narrowed to encompass only bodily injury caused by an "accident." See Minutes 205. It is improbable that, at the same time the drafters narrowed the conditions of air carrier liability in Article 17, they intended, in Article 24, to permit passengers to skirt those conditions by pursuing claims under local law.13
Inspecting the drafting history, the Court of Appeals stressed a proposal made by the Czechoslovak delegation to state in the treaty that, in the absence of a stipulation in the Convention itself, " 'the provisions of laws and national rules relative to carriage in each [signatory] State shall apply.' " 122 F. 3d, at 105 (quoting Minutes 176). That proposal was withdrawn upon amendment of the Convention's title to read: "Convention For The Unification Of Certain Rules Relating To International Transportation By Air." 49 Stat. 3014 (emphasis added); see 122 F. 3d, at 105. The Second Circuit saw in this history an indication "that national law was intended to provide the passenger's remedy where the Convention did not expressly apply." 122 F. 3d, at 105.
The British House of Lords, in Sidhu v. British Airways plc, [1997] 1 All E. R. 193, considered the same history, but found it inconclusive. Inclusion of the word "certain" in the Convention's title, the Lords reasoned, accurately indicated that "the [C]onvention is concerned with certain rules only, not with all the rules relating to international carriage by air." Id., at 204. For example, the Convention does not say "anything . . . about the carrier's obligations of insurance, and in particular about compulsory insurance against third party risks." Ibid. The Convention, in other words, is "a
13 Sir Alfred Dennis of Great Britain stated at the Warsaw Conference that Article 24 is "a very important stipulation which touches the very substance of the Convention, because [it] excludes recourse to common law." Minutes 213.
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