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    Volume 31, Number 1

      March 2018

    Environment

    Perspectives on the Cape Town Convention and Aircraft Equipment Protocol

    Jeffrey Klang

    T he Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment (Convention) and its Protocol on Matters Specific to Aircraft Equipment (Protocol) (together the Cape Town Convention or CTC) arguably has been the most important aviation treaty of our times. There is no doubt that it has improved global aviation safety by providing many countries’ airlines access to safer, greener, and more technologically advanced aircraft.

    Features

    Public Infrastructure

    The Cape Town Convention and the U.S. Export-Import Bank: A Great Success Story

    Louis E. Emery

    The Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment (Convention) is a precedentsetting multilateral, private international law treaty intended to bring predictability and standardization to financing transactions involving high-value mobile equipment, including aviation, rail, and space assets. This unique endeavor has been of particular value to the aviation finance community in parts of the global economy where domestic legal and commercial systems lacked adequate protections for potential providers of credit or credit support.

    International Law

    Reflections on Two Cape Town Convention Innovations

    F. Scott Wilson

    March 1, 2018, marked the twelfth anniversary of the entry into force of the Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment (Convention) and its Protocol on Matters Specific to Aircraft Equipment (Protocol) (together the Cape Town Convention or CTC). This milestone should prompt aircraft finance practitioners to reflect on the benefits of this remarkable legal instrument. This article discusses two of the key innovations that have helped to make the CTC so successful: the creation of the International Registry (IR), and the CTC’s treatment of aircraft engines. Both have changed the aircraft finance industry for the better.

    Latin America

    Ten Years of the Cape Town Convention and the Aircraft Protocol in Mexico

    Carlos Sierra

    Mexico has a long history with respect to the financing and leasing of “aircraft objects.” The Mexican corporate aircraft market is the world’s second largest after the United States. For more than three decades, Mexican airlines have had access to a wide range of forms of financing for their aircraft acquisitions, including leasing aircraft from leading international lessors. Despite the Mexican aircraft market’s scale and sophistication, however, the applicable legal regime has suffered from significant shortcomings affecting the leasing and financing of aircraft in Mexico.

    Air & Space

    Cape Town in Canada: Financing the Future

    Donald G. Gray and Auriol Marasco

    On November 16, 2001, 20 states signed the Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment (Convention) and its Protocol on Matters Specific to Aircraft Equipment (Protocol) (together the Cape Town Convention or CTC). The CTC’s aim was to provide an innovative legal framework that created needed transparency and predictability, reduced transaction costs, and mitigated risks in international aircraft finance.

    Columns

    Air & Space

    Chair's Message

    Andrea Branter

    This year is shaping up to be an exciting year for the Forum. We’re coming off an excellent Washington Update Conference, with panels on legislative issues, airline litigation, UAS/drones, airport funding, and the legal hurdles to human space travel. We once again demonstrated we’re the ABA’s one-stop shop for aviation and space law. Planning has also begun on the Space Law Symposium in Washington, D.C., in June and the Forum’s Annual Conference in Chicago in September. Our practice committees on Drones, Space Law, and Antitrust are active, holding educational calls and webinars, and we have launched a new practice committee on general, business, and charter aviation to better serve this vital part of the aviation industry.

    Air & Space

    Meet the New Editor

    Terence Boga is a shareholder of Richards, Watson & Gershon in the Los Angeles office. He serves as General Counsel for the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, owner and operator of the Bob Hope Airport (BUR), and has represented the agency since 2004. During that period, he has provided transactional advice on the entitlement and development of the airport authority’s largest capital improvement project to date, a three-story, 507,000-square-foot regional intermodal transportation center occupied by on-airport rental car companies and served by municipal bus operators. Additionally, he was a principal negotiator for the airport authority in its entitlement of a 14-gate, 355,000-square-foot replacement passenger terminal that will eliminate a long-standing safety problem and provide new amenities for travelers.

    Air & Space

    Meet the New Editor

    Graham Keithley is an attorney in the Washington, D.C., office of Baker McKenzie and a member of the firm’s Global Aviation group and Unmanned Aviation Systems focus team. Graham primarily works with aviation industry clients in regulatory and civil litigation matters, including before the U.S. DOT, FAA, CBP, TSA, and NTSB. Prior to joining the firm, Graham was an attorney at two top-ranked aviation practice law firms in Washington, D.C., focusing on transportation agency enforcement actions, accident investigations, antitrust investigations, and mass tort national litigation strategy matters.