Mark Welbourn

Practice Areas

Mark is a London-based partner who specialises in aviation insurance. Since qualifying in 2003, Mark has focused on advising airlines and their insurers on liability issues, including passenger and third party injury and property damage, delay, denied boarding, discrimination, cargo, subrogation and hull claims. He handles small claims and major loss/complex matters as well as advising on consumer regulatory issues.

The majority of Mark’s work concerns advising and handling major carrier claims throughout Europe, North America, Africa and Australasia, either directly or with correspondent lawyers. Mark also supervises claims in South America. Mark brings an additional level of experience to his practice, as a qualified private pilot.

Mark’s experience ranges from working on the Pan Am Lockerbie loss, through to the recent Las Vegas engine failure. Mark has been directly involved with every significant insured loss affecting British Airways since 2001.

He is a member of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers (FOIL) and a co-author of the aviation chapter in the latest edition of Kennedys’ Claims Handling Law and Practice Guide which was published in February 2021.

Work Highlights

Following the short landing of BA flight BA38 at LHR on 17 January 2008, and the uncontained engine failure of BA flight BA2276 at LAS on 8 September 2015, Mark handled all of the passenger and third party claims emanating from both incidents, as well as the subrogation claims against relevant manufacturers.

He was involved in handling the claims arising from a 2002 S-76A North Sea loss with the deaths of two crew and nine passengers. Proceedings for a declaration were issued in the High Court to ground jurisdiction in the UK.

Advised on the rig operator and employer of passengers involved in a Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin accident in the UK in 2006 involving the death of two crew and seven passengers.

Led the successful defence of the maintenance provider of a Schweizer 269 helicopter that crashed in the UK Lake District in 2004.

Successfully defended major UK carriers at trial in cases concerning the meaning of “accident” and “disembarkation” under Article 17 of the Montreal Convention.