e-magazine
A Trio Bands Together
It's time for Beijing to lose some economic weight and synergize with neighboring Tianjin and Hebei Province
Current Issue
· Table of Contents
· Editor's Desk
· Previous Issues
· Subscribe to Mag
Subscribe Now >>
Weekly Watch
Expert's View
World
Nation
Business
Finance
Market Watch
Legal-Ease
North American Report
Forum
Government Documents
Expat's Eye
Health
Science/Technology
Lifestyle
Books
Movies
Backgrounders
Special
Photo Gallery
Blogs
Reader's Service
Learning with
'Beijing Review'
E-mail us
RSS Feeds
PDF Edition
Web-magazine
Reader's Letters
Make Beijing Review your homepage
Hot Links

Market Avenue
eBeijing

The Latest Headlines
The Latest Headlines
UPDATED: April 30, 2014
Compensation Concerns MH370 Families
Share

Families of the passengers aboard the missing flight MH370 can commence their compensation claims, though the searches for the plane will need longer.

Concerns for proper compensation has grown since the multinational search for more than 50 days has failed to come up with any results.

"Even though the cause of the tragedy is not yet established and no plane debris has been found, Malaysia has officially announced that the plane crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, and this means families of passengers can start their compensation claims," said Tuo Guozhu of the Capital University of Economics and Business.

"The search for the MH370 flight is facing unprecedented challenges," said Sun Ruishan, a security researcher at the Civil Aviation University of China. Even the sites where searches have been carried out were based on calculations. No one knows exactly where the plane crashed.

"If search forces had found debris and confirmed the plane had crashed, a lot more work still needs to be done and the whole procedure will go rather slowly," Sun said, adding salvage of plane debris may take years.

Chinese insurance companies began paying compensation to the families last month. Tuo believes they will get compensation both from commercial insurance purchased by the passengers and through liability compensation paid by the airline.

China and Malaysia are both members of the Montreal Convention, a universal liability regime for international carriage by air. Under the Convention, a carrier is liable to pay up to 113,000 Special Drawing Rights (around 1.2 million yuan or $195,000) for each passenger.

Zheng Wei of Peking University added that compensation may break that cap if evidence shows negligence or wrongful acts by the carrier, so Malaysia Airlines may not start a payments now, when the causes to the disappearance remain unclear.

Families, he said, could file class action claims rather than claiming individually. Families can negotiate directly with the airline, but if they fail to reach an agreement, the families can resort to legal actions.

Flight MH370 went missing early on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

(Xinhua News Agency April 29, 2014)



 
Top Story
-Harnessing Officials
-Government Work Under Microscope
-Examining Obama's Asia Tour
-Intimate Diplomacy
-An Opportunity
Most Popular
在线翻译
About BEIJINGREVIEW | About beijingreview.com | Rss Feeds | Contact us | Advertising | Subscribe & Service | Make Beijing Review your homepage
Copyright Beijing Review All right reserved