Relatives of some of the 2004 Baotou air crash victims have
filed a lawsuit with a court in Beijing, seeking 11.75 million U.S.
dollars in compensation, a sum agreed in a pre-court arrangement of
the same case in the U.S., according to the plaintiffs' lawyer on
Thursday.
The plaintiffs lawyer Hao Junbo said he represented families of
32 victims in the accident. He filed the lawsuit with the Beijing
No. 2 Intermediate People's Court. On average, each family sued for
some 367,000 U.S. dollars in compensation, which is unprecedented
in China.
Xinhua's sources with the court confirmed the receipt of
the appeal, but said that it has not yet put it on record to go
through the court procedures.
The victims' relatives had previously used a U.S. jurisdiction
law to lodge the lawsuit with a California court in 2005, against
China Eastern Airlines, carrier in the air crash that happened in
Baotou, an industrial city of one million people in north China's
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, in 2004.
Also named in the lawsuit were Canada-based Bombardier, which
designed and sold the plane's frame, and the U.S.-based General
Electric, which manufactured the plane's turbojet engine.
Thursday's Beijing Morning Post quoted Hao as saying that
the victims' families have reached a pre-court arrangement with the
plane manufacturers on the sum of compensation plus interest
accrued over several years of delay. China Eastern Airlines
insisted on settling the case in China.
The tragedy happened on Nov. 21, 2004, when the 50-seat plane
plummeted into the frozen lake of Nanhai Park in Baotou just a few
seconds after take-off, killing all 47 passengers and six crew on
board and another two people on the ground. The plane, a
Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-200, was headed for Shanghai.
After the disaster, the Civil Aviation Authorities of China
issued a circular grounding all 29 Bombardier CRJ-200 jets owned by
seven airlines on the Chinese mainland. The sanction was later
lifted after the investigation into the accident was completed.
Investigators found that the wings of the plane, which had
stayed overnight at the airport in Baotou, were caked with frost.
No de-frost procedure was done before take-off, which was
attributable to the pilot's failure.
Experts held China Eastern responsible for the accident, as the
airline operator neglected daily safety management measures. "There
were flaws in the safety link," said former Chinese Vice Premier
Huang Ju at the 2004 national aviation work conference, when
speaking on the accident.
A total of 12 senior officials in the airline company were
punished for the accident, including chairman of the company, Li
Fenghua.
The airline company has agreed to compensate 210,000 yuan (about
27,000 U.S. dollars based on the exchange rate of 1 U.S. dollar
equivalent to 7.8 yuan) to each victim, based on China's 1993
standard concerning regulations on air crash compensation.
But the offer was rejected by most of the victims' families.
They claimed that China's average income rose by over four times
from 1993 to 2003, and the airline company's revenue soared by six
times during the period. The compensation standard was too low,
compared with the rise in incomes over that period, they
argued.
China raised air crash compensation to 400,000 yuan (51,000 U.S.
dollars based on exchange rate of 1 U.S. dollar equivalent to 7.8
yuan) per person in 2006.
"However, the standard will not suit for the settlement of the
Baotou case, since the standard was referred in the compensation of
air crash accidents that occurred after February 28, 2006,"
explained Zhang Qihuai, a lawyer with the Beijing Lawyers
Association.
(Xinhua News Agency November 22, 2007)