Profile: John Balfour
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Law Firm: | Beaumont & Son - Aviation at Clyde & Co |
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| Office: |
Beaumont & Son Aviation at Clyde & Co 51 Eastcheap EC3M 1JP |
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| City: | London | |
| Country: | England | |
| Tel: | +44 20 7623 1244 | |
| Fax: | +44 20 7623 5427 | |
| Email: | john.balfour@beaumontclydeco.com |
Aviation
Biography: Aviation
John Balfour was educated at Fettes College, Edinburgh and Worcester College, Oxford. He qualified as an English solicitor in 1979, with the London firm Frere Cholmeley, and at the beginning of 1983 he started practising in air law. Between 1990 and 1992 he was partner in charge of the firm's Brussels office.
In 1997, he moved to become a partner at Beaumont & Son, the leading international air law firm.
His practice covers most main areas of air law, including airline liability, claims and insurance, the sale, purchase and leasing of other commercial transactions involving aircraft, and all kinds of regulatory issues concerning airlines and airports. He has made a particular speciality of EC air law, having written a book and many articles, and spoken at many conferences, on the subject.
Significant work includes: conducting a number of studies for the EC Commission, acting for IATA in its challenge to the validity of Council Regulation (EC) 2027/97 on air carrier liability and currently its challenge to the EC denied boarding Regulation; acting for British Airways to defend its right to retain slots at Heathrow which it had acquired by way of a transaction; and acting for a complainant in a successful complaint to the commission about state aid to an airline.
He is a fellow of, and honorary solicitor to, the Royal Aeronautical Society, and a member and past chairman of its Air Law Group Committee, committee member and past secretary of the European Air Law Association, a board member of the European Aviation Club, a member of the International Advisory Board of the International Institute of Air and Space Law, Leiden University and a past fellow of the Chartered Institute of Transport.
His book European Community Air Law was published in 1995, and he has been a contributing editor (of the division on competition/EC) of Shawcross and Beaumont: Air Law for some 15 years. He has also written more than 60 articles on various air law subjects for various legal and industry journals, and spoken at more than 100 conferences and seminars.
This biography is an extract from The International Who's Who of Aviation Lawyers which can be purchased from our bookstore.
Featured Articles
Articles By This Lawyer
The Next Frontier - European Community External Aviation Matters
Some three-and-a-half years on from the judgment of the European Court of Justice in the so-called ‘open skies’ cases, it has become apparent that it was a landmark ruling which is now having very significant practical effects, in much the same way as the ‘Nouvelles Frontières’ judgment in 1986, on an apparently rather technical point concerning cross-border ticketing, paved the way for the creation of the internal aviation market in the EC.