Airline passengers face a tougher time making compensation claims after a woman who suffered an agonising knee injury while struggling into her seat on a British Airways Jumbo jet failed in her unique damages bid.

Beverley Barclay, 49, from Abingdon, will go without a penny after a judge ruled that what happened to her as she tried to get into her seat at Arizona's Phoenix Airport was not, at least legally, "an accident".

Judge Laurence West-Knights's decision that what Mrs Barclay suffered was a "mere fall" will be cause for celebration by all air carriers as it greatly restricts the circumstances in which payout claims can be made against them by injured passengers.

The judge acknowledged that his ruling that Mrs Barclay did not suffer "an accident" was "mildly counter-intuitive".

But, on a strict interpretation of the law, he said he had to dismiss Mrs Barclay's claim for £24,400 damages.

However, recognising the vital importance of the case, he did leave Mrs Barclay with a ray of hope when he granted her permission to challenge his decision in the Court of Appeal.

Mrs Barclay had just boarded the Boeing 747, which was headed for Heathrow, when she slipped on a plastic strip as she tried to get into her seat.

She suffered a serious ligament injury to her right knee and claimed compensation from BA under the 1999 Montreal Convention - which makes airlines liable to passengers who suffer "bodily injury" in an "accident" on board an aircraft.

The only issue in the case was whether what Mrs Barclay suffered was "an accident" within the meaning of the Convention.

Judge West-Knights accepted BA arguments that it was not, and that what Mrs Barclay had suffered was a "mere fall", for which the airline could not be held liable.

He told the court: "Her claim therefore fails on the ground that there was no relevant accident. This is a conclusion which remains, to my mind, mildly counter-intuitive, but intuition is not the only, or the best, guide in this field."

The word "accident" in the Convention was "a term of art" and the judge said he was bound by precedent to dismiss Mrs Barclay's claim.

However, he gave Mrs Barclay some hope of eventually winning her case when he said that, in his view, the law relating to the definition of "accident" in the Convention had "taken a wrong turn".

He said that the law, as it stands, appears "unduly to limit what is an 'accident', and needs to be nudged back onto track by the Court of Appeal".

Mrs Barclay was not in court to hear the judge's ruling.