London refuses to consider lawsuits over planes blocked in Ukraine
7 June 2024 13:36
The London High Court has refused to consider claims filed by owners and lessors of aircraft stranded in Ukraine due to the war against insurance companies. The court ruled that these cases should be heard in Ukrainian jurisdiction, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports, citing a ruling on a claim filed by Aercap Ireland against Universal Insurance Company.
Aircraft lessors, including Ireland’s AerCap (AER.N), are suing insurers after the Russian military invaded Ukraine and aircraft were blocked at the airport.
In a ruling involving six separate claims, Judge Andrew Henshaw ruled that the London cases should be stayed due to “exclusive jurisdiction clauses” that require litigation to be heard in Ukraine.
The plaintiffs argued that the cases should be heard in London, in particular because the ongoing war in Ukraine makes it very difficult to have a fair trial in that country. However, in his judgment, Judge Henshaw noted that “the evidence of the impact of the war on the judicial system … does not indicate that the war is likely to cause significant delays or other problems in the effective processing of these claims in the courts of Ukraine”.
Why foreign planes are stuck in Ukraine
Civil aviation flights in Ukraine have been suspended since 24 February 2022 due to the full-scale Russian invasion. Some Ukrainian airlines had managed to evacuate their aircraft before the invasion and return them to their lessors, but some of the planes are still at the airports
And in October 2023, it became known that Wizz Air dismantled two of the three stuck aircraft for spare parts.
“We managed to save one aircraft that remained in Lviv. We managed to bring the engines of two of them to Poland. The remaining one (aircraft) is in good condition, but we cannot safely take it out of the country yet,” said Wizz Air CEO Jozsef Varadi at the time.
