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FOREWORD

            Within barely two generations, aviation has developed into a major industry and has become an indivisible part of the economic and social life on the global level. In the year 2000 aircraft of the world have carried 1.57 billion passengers – a quarter of the mankind took a flight in that year! Thailand has been in the forefront of the development of domestic and international air transport and the safety and quality of service on board Thai aircraft has become the benchmark that others try to achieve.

            The international air transport creates complex social relations that require legal regulation on the international level. A specialized and demanding field of the legal expertise – air law – has developed during the 20th century that requires a wide spectrum of knowledge of the general international law, comparative law, private international law and many related disciplines.

            The fundamental requirement for the understanding of the complex legal regulation of international air transport is the ready availability of the basic legal sources treaties, agreements, protocols, etc. However, even with the growing availability of the Internet databases, it is not always easy to gain access to updated sources of international air law – in particular in the national languages. It is the merit of this publication that it makes available in a compact and easily understandable structure an almost exhaustive spectrum of the main sources of international air law, many of them presented in Thai version.

            Mr. Prasert Pompongsuk, LL.M. (McGill) – the main catalyst and editor of the publication – was a stellar graduate student at the Institute of Air and Space Law of McGill University at Montreal and I was honored to be the Director of his graduate studies and research and supervisor of his Master of Laws thesis. It is gratifying to see him assuming the position of intellectual leadership in the highly specialized field of international air law in Thailand and in the world at large.

            This publication will prove to be a most useful reference material for government servants, airline managements, practicing lawyers, journalists and for students of law and international relations.

            I salute the authors and congratulate them on an excellent book!
 

Professor Dr. Michael Milde
Institute of Air and Space Law,
McGill University, Montreal
February 2001
[Former Director, ICAO Legal Bureau]