Stuck overnight in a foreign airport with a hotel bill, a missed connection and a suitcase that never showed up? The Montreal Convention is the international treaty that makes the airline pay for it. We break down the 2026 liability limits, what you can actually claim, the 7-day and 21-day deadlines almost everyone misses, and how the treaty works alongside EC 261.
You land in a city you've never been to at 1am, six hours behind schedule. The connection is long gone. The hotel you prepaid sits a taxi ride away and won't refund a penny. Your suitcase is somewhere over the Atlantic, and the airline desk closed an hour ago.
Nobody hands you a leaflet explaining what happens next. So you pay for another hotel, buy a toothbrush and a shirt, write off the wasted booking, and quietly absorb several hundred euros of someone else's failure.
Here's what almost nobody tells you at the airport. A treaty signed in Montreal in 1999 makes the airline financially liable for those exact losses, and it governs flights across more than 140 countries. It doesn't pay a flat fee. It pays your real costs, up to a legal ceiling, and the airline must prove it isn't at fault rather than the other way round.
We build these claims every day. Below is how the Montreal Convention works in 2026, what the current limits are, and where passengers lose money they were always entitled to.
What is the Montreal Convention and which flights does it cover?
The Montreal Convention is a treaty that sets one global rulebook for airline liability on international flights. Its full name is the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air, which explains why everyone shortens it.
Adopted on 28 May 1999, it came into force on 4 November 2003 and replaced the patchwork left behind by the 1929 Warsaw Convention. According to IATA, 141 of ICAO's 191 member states have signed up, along with the European Union itself. That covers the overwhelming majority of commercial international traffic.
Coverage is narrower than people assume, though. The treaty applies to international carriage, meaning your departure point and destination sit in two different ratifying states, or you fly a return trip that starts and finishes in one ratifying state with an agreed stop somewhere else.
A purely domestic flight sits outside it. A Chicago to Denver hop falls under US rules instead, where the Department of Transportation sets a separate domestic baggage liability limit of $4,700 per passenger under 14 CFR Part 254. Fly Chicago to Paris and the Convention takes over.
One quirk trips up a lot of travellers on connecting itineraries. If your whole journey is sold as a single contract of carriage, the Convention treats it as one international journey end to end, even the domestic-looking leg in the middle. We see plenty of passengers assume the short feeder flight that ruined their day "doesn't count", when it very much does.
How much can you claim under the Montreal Convention in 2026?
The limits are set in Special Drawing Rights, or SDR, an artificial currency the International Monetary Fund uses for accounting. Airlines quote SDR because it stops the treaty being distorted by any one country's exchange rate.
Those limits get reviewed every five years for inflation. The most recent review took effect on 28 December 2024 and raised every figure by roughly 18%, which is why so much of what you'll read online is now wrong. The official ICAO notice sets out the current numbers.
Here's what those SDR figures are actually worth, converted at the IMF's published SDR rate on 28 July 2026, when one SDR bought US$1.3546.
| What the claim covers | Limit in SDR | Approx. in EUR | Approx. in USD |
| Death or bodily injury (Art. 17 & 21) | 151,880 | €181,100 | $205,700 |
| Damage caused by delay to passengers (Art. 22.1) | 6,303 | €7,515 | $8,540 |
| Baggage lost, damaged or delayed (Art. 22.2) | 1,519 | €1,811 | $2,058 |
| Cargo, per kilogram (Art. 22.3) | 26 | €31 | $35 |
Every limit above applies per passenger, not per booking and not per bag. A family of four therefore carries four separate baggage ceilings, not one shared pot.
Treat the euro and dollar columns as indicative only. SDR floats daily, so the exact figure on the day your loss occurred is what a court would use, and on a large injury claim the difference can run to thousands.
The single most common error we correct is passengers reading the baggage number as a payout. It isn't. It's a ceiling on what you can recover, and you still have to evidence what you actually lost to get anywhere near it.
What losses does the Montreal Convention cover when your flight is delayed?
Article 19 makes the carrier liable for damage caused by delay to passengers, baggage or cargo. Crucially, the burden sits with the airline. It escapes liability only by proving that it and its staff took all measures reasonably required to avoid the damage, or that such measures were impossible.
But the treaty compensates loss, not inconvenience. There is no flat rate here. If your flight ran five hours late and cost you nothing beyond irritation, there is nothing to claim.
If it cost you money, the picture changes fast. Recoverable losses typically include a replacement hotel night, meals during the wait, a missed prepaid tour or cruise departure, an unused car hire day, a rebooked onward ticket, and documented lost earnings for time you couldn't work.
The rule of thumb we give passengers is simple. If it appears on a receipt, a bank statement or a booking confirmation, it's arguable. If it only appears in your description of how miserable the day was, it isn't.
Note also that Article 29 rules out punitive damages entirely. You recover what you lost and not a penny of punishment on top, which is why building the paper trail is the whole game.
In our claims work, the delay files that settle fastest are those where the passenger photographed the departure board and kept the taxi and hotel receipts on the night. The ones that stall are those reconstructed from memory nine months later.
What does the Montreal Convention pay for lost, delayed or damaged baggage?
Checked baggage sits under Article 17(2), and the airline's liability is close to automatic. It is liable for destruction, loss or damage that occurred while the bag was in its charge, and it escapes only by showing the damage came from an inherent defect in the bag itself or its contents.
Hand luggage works differently. For anything you kept with you, the airline is liable only if the damage was its fault.
Delayed baggage is where most money goes unclaimed. You're entitled to reimbursement for reasonable replacement essentials while you wait, so buy the clothes and toiletries you need and keep every receipt. If the bag still hasn't surfaced after 21 days, it's treated as lost and you can claim its value.
The 1,519 SDR ceiling covers everything arising from that baggage, and the Court of Justice of the EU confirmed in Walz v Clickair (C-63/09) that the cap absorbs both material and non-material damage together. One ceiling, not two.
There is a way to raise it. Under Article 22(2) you can make a special declaration of interest at check-in and pay a supplementary fee, which lifts the limit to the declared value. Hardly anyone does this, but for genuinely valuable checked items it's the only route to full recovery.
This is also where people confuse two separate pots of money, because the airline's liability and what your travel policy pays out for a missing suitcase are entirely different claims. We regularly meet passengers who claimed on insurance, took the excess hit, and never realised the carrier was independently liable for the same bag.
How long do you have to file a Montreal Convention claim against an airline?
Shorter than you think, and the clocks are brutal. Article 31 sets the notice deadlines for baggage, and missing one extinguishes the claim outright unless you can prove the airline acted fraudulently, which is close to impossible in practice.
Article 35 then imposes a hard two-year limitation period on bringing an action. Courts treat this as a limit on the right itself rather than an ordinary statute of limitations, so the usual grounds for extending a deadline simply don't apply.
| Type of claim | Written notice to the airline | Absolute deadline to sue |
| Damaged checked baggage | 7 days from receipt | 2 years |
| Delayed checked baggage | 21 days from delivery | 2 years |
| Passenger delay losses | No fixed notice period | 2 years |
| Death or bodily injury | No fixed notice period | 2 years |
The two-year clock runs from the date the aircraft arrived, the date it should have arrived, or the date the carriage stopped, whichever applies to your situation.
Do not treat a Property Irregularity Report at the baggage desk as your written notice. It records that a bag went astray, nothing more. A separate written claim, sent to the airline and dated inside the 7 or 21-day window, is what preserves your rights.
We've had to turn away otherwise strong baggage files purely because the passenger waited a month for the airline's "investigation" to conclude before putting anything in writing.
Which pays more for a delayed flight, the Montreal Convention or EC 261?
They aren't rivals. They're layers, and on a lot of flights you can use both.
Regulation EC 261/2004 pays a fixed sum for the disruption itself, no receipts required. The Montreal Convention reimburses what the disruption cost you. The Court of Justice of the EU settled the relationship in IATA and ELFAA (C-344/04), holding that EC 261's standardised remedies operate upstream of the treaty rather than conflicting with it.
| Feature | Montreal Convention | EC 261 / UK261 |
| What it pays | Proven losses, up to a cap | Fixed €250 to €600 |
| Receipts needed | Yes, essential | No |
| Covers baggage | Yes | No |
| Where it applies | 141 states, worldwide | EU/UK departures and carriers |
| Time limit to claim | 2 years | 2 to 6 years by country |
Article 12 of EC 261 is the joint you need to understand. It preserves your right to claim further compensation beyond the fixed sum, while allowing whatever you received under EC 261 to be set against it. In plain terms, the fixed payment tops up your losses rather than stacking blindly on top of them.
The two regimes also part company on excuses. An airline that successfully pleads extraordinary circumstances to escape the fixed EC 261 payment isn't automatically off the hook under Article 19, because the treaty asks a different question about reasonable measures.
Our working approach is to run EC 261 first because it's faster and needs no evidence of loss, then bring a Montreal claim for anything the fixed sum doesn't cover. On a wrecked long-haul connection with a lost bag, that combination routinely doubles the recovery.
What does the Montreal Convention pay if a passenger is injured or dies on a flight?
Article 17(1) makes the carrier liable for death or bodily injury caused by an accident on board the aircraft or during embarking and disembarking. The treaty then splits liability into two tiers, which is its most important feature.
Below 151,880 SDR, liability is strict. The airline pays proven damages without the family having to establish any fault whatsoever, and it cannot contract out of this.
Above that figure, the airline avoids further liability only by proving the damage wasn't caused by its negligence or wrongful act, or that a third party caused it alone. That reversal of the burden of proof is what makes serious injury claims viable at all.
Article 28 also requires airlines to make advance payments to meet immediate economic needs where national law demands it, and in the EU that obligation is hard-wired: at least 16,000 SDR within 15 days for death cases.
These claims sit well outside routine compensation work and belong with a specialist aviation lawyer from day one. We flag that plainly rather than pretending otherwise, and the two-year limitation period applies here exactly as it does everywhere else.
Did you know?
Most articles online still quote the old Montreal Convention limits. They changed on 28 December 2024. The cap on delay damages rose from 5,346 to 6,303 SDR per passenger, worth roughly €7,500 or £6,400 at today's rate, and the baggage cap went from 1,288 to 1,519 SDR.
Where do you file a Montreal Convention claim, and can a regulator help?
Not to a regulator, no. That's the structural point that catches people out, and it costs them real money.
Article 33 gives you a choice of five courts: the airline's domicile, its principal place of business, the place of business where the ticket was bought, the place of destination, and, for death or injury claims only, your own principal and permanent residence. Pick whichever suits you, because the difference in procedure and cost between them can be significant.
What you cannot do is take a Montreal claim to a national enforcement body. The UK Civil Aviation Authority, the US DOT and the EU's NEBs enforce their own statutory schemes, so knowing which regulator handles which type of complaint saves you weeks of writing to the wrong office.
In practice, the vast majority of Montreal claims never reach a courtroom. Airlines settle when the loss is documented, the deadline was met and the demand is proportionate.
That's precisely where the leverage sits. A well-evidenced claim submitted inside the notice window gets paid because litigating it would cost the airline more than settling. A vague complaint sent four months late gets a form letter.
Is it worth making a Montreal Convention claim yourself?
The Montreal Convention is the most useful passenger protection almost nobody uses. It applies far more widely than EC 261, it covers baggage which EC 261 ignores entirely, and it puts the burden of proof on the airline rather than on you.
Its weakness is also its strength. Because it pays real losses instead of a flat fee, it rewards passengers who keep receipts and punishes those who don't. The treaty won't compensate you for a bad day. It will compensate you for the hotel, the missed cruise, the replacement wardrobe and the lost working day, up to 6,303 SDR for a delay and 1,519 SDR for a bag.
So do three things when an international flight goes wrong. Photograph the departure board, keep every receipt from that moment onward, and put your claim in writing to the airline inside 7 days for a damaged bag or 21 for a delayed one. Those three habits are worth more than any legal argument you'll ever make.
Then check whether fixed compensation is sitting there too. Most passengers owed money under the treaty are owed money under EC 261 or UK261 as well, and claiming one doesn't forfeit the other.
That's the part we handle. We work out which regime applies to your flight, build both claims where both are available, argue the airline's excuses down, and chase the money until it lands. No win, no fee, and you keep every cent the airline pays.
Find out what your international flight was really worth
If your international flight was delayed, cancelled or lost your baggage, you may be owed reimbursement of up to 6,303 SDR under the Montreal Convention, plus €250 to €600 in fixed compensation under EC 261 on top. Gyro checks your eligibility for free. You keep 100% of whatever the airline pays.
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