【Case Study】

In January 2011,P,a Chinese national,took a Japan Airlines plane from Beijing to Tokyo.However,the JAL flight was forced to divert to Osaka airport rather than land at Narita airport due to poor weather conditions.P was forced to stay in the airport waiting hall without adequate food or water during an unscheduled layover which lasted unexpectedly for sixteen hours.P claimed that passengers of other nationalities were allowed to leave and were provided with hotel accommodation; JAL officials,on the contrary,said that there had been no discrimination,and that passengers of all nationalities had been treated equally.After his return to Beijing,P was planning to sue JAL for compensations.(https://www.daowen.com)

Due to the lack of solid evidence to support the alleged discrimination,the dispute was resolved as a matter of service provision rather than discrimination.As neither international convention to which China is a contracting party nor Chinese domestic law provides any article regulating the specific service of carrier in the above described situation,P’s counsel attempted to rely on international practice to win the claim.