In the area of aircraft finance practice one may encounter strange inconsistencies in the legal framework or one may find that certain legal concepts are really not appropriate for the industry as it has developed. In this publication, some of those inconsistencies and outdated legal concepts are described. First, there is the question of the fate of a right of pledge on an aircraft which is registered as to nationality in the Netherlands and which is subsequently recorded in the Dutch Public Registry, being the register maintained pursuant to the 1948 Geneva Convention. Second, the author takes the view that the 1933 Rome Convention on the precautionary arrest of aircraft is outdated and totally out of sync with today's aviation industry. Third, we see the strange situation that the Cape Town Convention, while it does not apply to the European part of the Netherlands, applies to certain special municipalities of the Netherlands, i.e., the BES Islands. This leads to a peculiar situation because the domestic laws of the BES Islands take a different view on, e.g., accession of engines than the Convention. This subject is closely connected with the view expressed by the author that accession rules, to the extent they relate to aircraft engines, should be abolished.
Air and Space Law