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EgyptAir Accepts Damage Payment To Victims' Families
WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - EgyptAir, on Thursday, acknowledged liability for the 1999 crash of flight 990, but stopped short of admitting responsibility for the crash.
The airline agreed to pay financial damages to families who are eligible to sue in U.S. courts. But not all of the victims' families are eligible to receive compensation. Payment disbursement depends on a complicated set of contingencies and rules, some extremely minute, such as the country from where the passenger's ticket was purchased.
Christopher Carlsen, an EgyptAir attorney, said that the airline accepted liability because it saw no reason to make the families wait.
"They were sitting on our plane, and we want to take care of them," said Carlsen.
EgyptAir said that it was retaining the right to sue other parties in order to assist in costs related to the October 1999 crash of the Boeing 767 that killed all 217 persons aboard the flight. Boeing Company, the maker of the aircraft, is seen as a potential target in any such suit.
On its way from New York to Cairo on October 31st, the aircraft plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off the Massachusetts coast, 30 minutes after the plane left Kennedy International.
Flight 990 crashed around the same area where John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane went down, killing both him and his wife.
The EgyptAir flight plummeted down extremely rapidly at a 90-degree angle.
U.S. officials concluded that EgyptAir's Flight 990 co-pilot, Gamil Al- Batouti, purposefully brought down the plane in order to commit suicide. EgyptAir rejects the theory.
"From day one we've said the suicide theory is nonsense," said Carlsen.
U.S. investigators base their conclusion that the co-pilot deliberately caused the crash on the basis of a voice uttering supposed religious prayers just before the plane crashed.
U.S. safety investigators are currently still writing the final report on the crash.
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