Ethiopian Airlines has stipulated that it would be compensating families of the victims of the Sunday, March 10, 2019, plane crash which claimed lives of 149 passengers and eight crew members.
The compensation would be done in line with the Montreal Convention, formally the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air, which dictates victims of air disaster should be compensated.
Families of the Ethiopian plane crash victims were informed about the compensation during a closed-door meeting with the airline’s officials. The amount of money to be paid to each of the families, Sunday Nation reported, would range between KSh 17 million and KSh 25 million.
It is understood the bereaved families had demanded to know how much they would be compensated, but they did not get the exact figures from the airline. The amount to be compensated is likely to vary from one family to another and would be determine by a number of factors.
The compensations would be done in compliance with the guidelines provided under the Montreal Convention.
According to the Convention, compensations for victims of an air crash are done when passengers suffer injuries or die as a result of unexpected occurrence. As of today, the minimum compensation is said to be KSh 17 million (US$ 170,000) per victim. It is understood that the airlines usually have an insurance policy that covers every passenger on board their flight at any given time.
However, the compensations can only be done after bodies of the plane crash victims are positively identified, and this means the families of the Ethiopian tragedy would have to wait for the forensic investigations to be concluded.
The Ethiopian Airlines accident claimed lives of 36 Kenyans, four of whom had dual citizenships and whose nationalities could not be immediately identified, which is why the initial reports indicated 32.
Besides the 36 Kenyan victims, a total of 18 Canadians, six Egyptians, nine Ethiopians, seven French, eight Americans and seven Britons among other nationalities also died in the accident. The tragedy prompted several countries across the world to ban Boeing 737 Max 8 jets from flying in their airspaces including the United States.