The priority rules under the Cape Town Convention and Protocols

Abstract

The 2001 Cape Town Convention and associated Protocols relating to aircraft objects, railway rolling stock and space assets are among the most ambitious international instruments ever to have been concluded in the field of commercial transactional law. The Convention and Aircraft Protocol, which together consist of no fewer than 99 Articles, have been widely adopted and more ratifications are in train. Central to the Convention is the International Registry in which international interests, and, in the case of aircraft objects and space assets, sales, can be registered and secure priority over subsequently registered interests and unregistered interests. By the end of 2011, in under six years since it came into operation, the International Registry for aircraft objects in Dublin had processed 313,000 registrations. The priority rules constitute key provisions of the Convention. In this article Roy Goode, who chaired the UNIDROIT Study Group and Drafting Committee and the Drafting Committee at the Diplomat...