The U. S. Supreme Court today refused to review a lower court’s ruling that Air France was not liable for damages suffered by its passengers in the May, 1972 Lod Airport massacre. Survivors of the travelers gunned down at the Lod terminal by three Japanese terrorists in the service of an Arab terrorist organization filed suit against the carrier under the Warsaw Convention.
The convention holds airlines responsible for damages suffered by their passengers “on board the aircraft or in the course of any of the operations of embarking or disembarking”. A U. S. court of appeals ruled, however, that during the episode at Lod, now known as Ben Gurion Airport, “the passengers were waiting for their baggage inside the terminal building, had left the aircraft and its immediate vicinity and were no longer acting at the direction of the carrier.”
The suit was filed by members of a group of Puerto Rican tourists who were caught in the gunfire at the airport. Most of the fatalities were sustained by that group.
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