AirAsia announces $100K compensation per passenger

Pangkalan Bun, Indonesia, Jan 8: AirAsia has announced said it will provide about 100,000 dollars in compensation for each passenger on the plane. This is in addition to 24,000 dollars already offered to victims' families.

According to report in DNA, the company has said that it will follow Indonesia's Transport Ministry's guidelines which say the air travel companies are required to pay a compensation of 1.3 million Indonesian rupiah (98,000 dollars) for deaths caused by aviation accidents.

Meanwhile, the search operation team on Wednesday found the tail section of the AirAsia flight that went down more than a week ago in the Java Sea, raising hopes that the plane's black boxes might soon be recovered to determine the cause of the mysterious crash.

"We have found the tail that has been our main target today," Bambang Soelistyo, the head of Indonesia's search and rescue told reporters in Jakarta as the search operation entered its 11th day.

The tail is the section where the black boxes are located. The black boxes are often considered the key piece of evidence when it comes to investigating a commercial plane disaster. They provide valuable information, from a plane's air speed to the position of the landing gear, to pilot communications.

Searchers have been scouring the choppy waters of the Java Sea for remains from the commercial jet since it lost contact on December 28 with 162 people on board.

AirAsia group chief executive Tony Fernandes confirmed the announcement in a post on his Twitter account.

"I am led to believe the tail section has been found. If right part of tail section then the black box should be there," he tweeted.

"We need to find all parts soon so we can find all [our] guests to ease the pain of our families. That still is our priority."

Flight QZ8501 plunged into the water off Borneo island about 40 minutes into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city Surabaya en route to Singapore. No survivors have been found.

Forty bodies have been recovered so far but authorities believe most of the passengers could still be inside the main body of the plan.

OneIndia News
(With agency inputs)