Aviation

With expansive service offerings and global reach, our aviation team is among only a few practices able to command the full, global breadth of the aviation industry for our clients. Our collaborative, cross-practice approach ensures that we deliver commercially sensible, legally sound, and mission-critical advice. We are trusted advisers to the world’s leading investors, lessors, airlines, operators, financial institutions, aircraft and aircraft engine manufacturers, private clients, and other participants in the aviation market worldwide.

Our truly global aviation team—encompassing lawyers with specialized industry knowledge serving clients from strategic hubs around the world—has a keen grasp of the practical application of international legal and regulatory systems. This knowledge, bolstered by our extensive network of local professionals, keeps us at the forefront of legal developments and strategically positions us to provide elite counsel to clients on a broad spectrum of cross-border and multijurisdictional matters.

Our work spans the gamut of issues our aviation clients confront around the world, including financing and leasing transactions, litigation, bankruptcies, restructurings, sanctions, taxation, labor and employment matters, and more.

LESSORS

Our firm’s global presence—spanning 17 time zones—allows us to offer on-demand service to lessors. Whether an airline is based in the Asia Pacific region, Europe, the Middle East, North America, or beyond (including Africa, Central America, and South America), our lawyers stand ready to negotiate agreements with them. We have experience representing lessors, financiers, and airlines in operating and financing lease transactions, including regularly assisting operating lessors with lease and financing agreements. We provide tactical, real-time guidance to clients in evaluating their commercial goals and legal risks. We also offer guidance on the formation and structuring of leasing subsidiaries of foreign leasing firms. Our talented aviation practitioners represent all market participants—from active and expanding operating lessors to individual investors—on a range of topics including operating, finance, and tax-structured leases; portfolio purchases and sales; asset-backed securitizations; warehouse financings; and secondary market debt sales and acquisitions. 

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

Our team represents financial institutions worldwide on all forms of financing transactions, including bilateral arrangements, structured financings, debt and equity capital market transactions, and all types of lease financings. Our aviation lawyers have a remarkable record of accomplishment in working with our clients on aircraft loan workouts and repossessions, making us uniquely suited to advise financial institutions and leasing businesses on all of their aviation needs. Our expansive cross-practice aviation team, coupled with the formidable resources and multidisciplinary talent of a global law firm, mean that we are able work seamlessly across practices and geographies to advise clients on tax, regulatory, and litigation matters, among others.

AIRLINES

Our aviation team helps our airline clients address and overcome a wide variety of legal issues that all airlines face at some point during their operations. Our clients include regional, international, full-service, low-cost, and cargo carriers, as well as air taxi companies. We assist our airline clients on aircraft and engine purchase and supply agreements; leasing and financing arrangements; engine pooling agreements; credit allocations; part supplies; litigation; corporate, business, and finance matters; regulatory and employment concerns; antitrust issues; and environmental, noise, and airport access matters.

BUSINESS AIRCRAFT

Our business aircraft practice covers all aspects of this niche market, and we regularly advise corporations on their private aviation needs as well as ultra-high-net-worth individuals and aircraft operators on their private aircraft needs. Our lawyers are highly regarded and sought-after advisers to aviation industry stakeholders, having decades of sector-specific knowledge, experience in many jurisdictions, and active membership and participation in numerous aviation-related professional associations.

LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT

Our lawyers have a long history of representing airline and airport clients in labor and employment matters globally. We help those clients manage their sizeable and diverse workforces and navigate the many regulatory and business challenges that may arise—including wage and hour litigation and compliance, issues of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) preemption, employment discrimination litigation, and disability and accommodation claims. We counsel on the full range of human resources issues and defend individual and class employment litigation and government enforcement matters. Our team of nationally recognized Railway Labor Act (RLA) professionals have long assisted air carriers with their labor relations matters. We also have an extensive background counseling clients on union representation issues, including campaign and union avoidance strategy, single-carrier disputes, eligibility questions, craft or class issues, and questions of National Mediation Board (NMB) jurisdiction, as well as disputes about employer communications and conduct during election campaigns, interference allegations, and postelection NMB proceedings.

BANKRUPTCY & RESTRUCTURING

Restructurings in the aviation industry call for a nuanced and comprehensive skillset because they require both “back-end” skills—to analyze, assess, and litigate existing operative documents—as well as “front-end” skills—to renegotiate and redocument the replacement financing and lease transactions. To minimize litigation risk and obtain optimal outcomes, we work to preserve our clients’ interests and rights both inside and outside of bankruptcy proceedings. Our deep bench of lawyers with subject matter mastery means that we can swiftly field a team tailored to our clients’ bankruptcy or restructuring needs—achieving the desired result in a cost-effective manner. Our experience includes assisting clients in enforcing contract rights, recovering assets, turning around troubled companies, reforming contractual rights, and purchasing assets from or extending financing to debtors. We are among only a few global law firms with both contentious and non-contentious aviation restructuring and insolvency capabilities.

LITIGATION

Our litigation and dispute resolution lawyers assist clients in the management of contentious situations in numerous jurisdictions around the world. We successfully represent airlines, lessors, lenders, aviation businesses, and aircraft and engine manufacturers in US federal and state courts, including appellate and bankruptcy courts; the London Commercial Court; the High Court of England & Wales; courts in France and Germany; the Dubai International Financial Centre; and the Singapore Commercial Court, among many other venues. Our team also handles all major forms of international arbitration, including London Court of International Arbitration, International Chamber of Commerce, United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, and ad-hoc arbitrations.

SOURCING AND TECHNOLOGY

Our technology transactions, outsourcing, and commercial contracts lawyers advise clients in the aviation industry on complex transactions. Our counsel enables them to acquire, transfer, and protect their technology assets; exploit their products and services; interact with personnel, customers, and providers; and otherwise run their business operations more efficiently and effectively. In particular, we advise both suppliers and customers on Passenger Service System (PSS) and Global Distribution System (GDS) solutions; IT hosting procurements (including dedicated, cloud, and hybrid cloud arrangements); application development; deployment and maintenance arrangements; and software solution procurements (such as crew, flight planning, and ground operations). We also assist aviation clients with cybersecurity-related procurements; data privacy compliance; maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) arrangements; and business process outsourcing arrangements, including for back-office and client-facing services.