What Is a Life Worth?

An average of 1,000 people around the world are killed in commercial airline crashes each year. Under the 1929 Warsaw Convention, a civil aviation treaty now covering 92 nations, the heirs of those who died on international flights could for many years collect only a maximum of $8,291*--unless they could prove willful misconduct. The U.S., whose citizens are the world's most frequent and most affluent air travelers, has for years considered this figure ridiculously low. Even after 45 of the Warsaw signers agreed to double the liability to $16,582 in 1955, the U.S. felt that the increase was not nearly enough, declined to ratify the new protocol.

Last week, after years of fruitless efforts to have the Warsaw Convention rewritten, the U.S. announced that it will unilaterally denounce the treaty next May unless changes are made. This would leave the heirs of crash victims free to sue in U.S. courts any airline that services the U.S., provided the courts were willing to accept the jurisdiction. Since U.S. withdrawal would both seriously disrupt treaty proceedings and put foreign lines in for a lot of potential trouble, the airlines are anxious to make some adjustment to placate the U.S.

As an alternative to rewriting the Warsaw Convention, the U.S. proposes that the liability limit be raised temporarily to $75,000, eventually to a permanent ceiling of $100,000. Seeking a compromise, the International Air Transport Association is polling members who fly into the U.S. on whether they are willing to raise the liability limit to $50,000; early returns indicate that they are. In practice, the final sums won by the heirs of crash victims might well be less than that. Court settlements of crash claims against domestic U.S. airlines, to which the Warsaw Convention does not apply, have averaged $25,281 over a ten-year period.

* The equivalent of 125,000 French francs of 1929, which was the treaty's formal money unit. The limit was intentionally set low to aid airlines that were then new and struggling.

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