As part of our ongoing series of interviews with in-house lawyers at international aviation companies, ALN caught up with Ina Anzalna Shamsuddin, head of legal at Malaysia Airlines, to discuss the carrier’s recent restructuring and her role in Malaysia’s accession to the Montreal Convention.

Earlier this month, GTDT Aviation Law News brought together an expert panel of in-house and private practice lawyers for a discussion of the new European drone regulations – click here to listen again.

In the first of a new occasional series of interviews with lawyers at airlines, ALN speaks to Rob McCulloch – director, legal at Canadian low-cost airline WestJet – about his background in the aviation industry, the challenges and rewards of his role, and the opportunities and pitfalls of the changing regulatory landscape in Canada.

Clyde & Co rounded off this year’s Beaumont International Aviation Conference in London yesterday with a series of panels on topics as diverse as disaster management, aeromedical issues and airline insolvency, which nevertheless shared a common theme: preparing for and managing risk.

Airlines, like most debtors, don’t like to think about what they need to start preparing for “just in case” they encounter a bankruptcy situation, but for carriers with complex structures that operate in multiple jurisdictions “that’s where your leverage is” according to panellists in a session on airline bankruptcies at IATA’s Legal Symposium in Bangkok.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC)’s successful price-fixing case against travel agent Flight Centre showed that agency relationships are not a “complete answer” to the question of whether airlines and travel agents are competitors down under, but the effects of the case in the wider region are less straightforward, according to a panel at the International Air Transport (IATA) legal symposium in Bangkok last week.