Delta Air Lines said on Wednesday that it was offering $30,000 to each passenger who was aboard the flight from Minneapolis that crashed and flipped upside down this week while trying to land in Toronto.
All 80 people — 76 passengers and four crew members — who were on Delta Flight 4819 survived after the jet made a rough landing and rolled over, ending belly-up with its right wing sheared off at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Monday.
Of the 21 passengers who were taken to hospitals, all but one had been released by Wednesday morning, Delta said. None of the passengers had life-threatening injuries.
Delta confirmed on Wednesday that it had made the $30,000 offer to passengers. Its representatives were telling the passengers that the offer came with “no strings attached and does not affect rights,” a company spokesman said via email.
Three days after the crash, officials have released few details about the investigation. On Wednesday, Ed Bastian, Delta’s chief executive, said in an interview on CBS that the flight had been staffed by an “experienced crew” but provided little further information.
But it appears that passengers are already considering how to seek compensation from Delta. Rochon Genova, a Canadian law firm, said it had been retained by some of the passengers.
According to international treaties, when an international aviation accident causes injury or death, airlines in the United States are required to make advance payments to passengers if the airline determines that the money is necessary to cover their immediate economic needs.
If a passenger dies, the initial payment must be more than about $20,000, according to the Delta Air Lines website, which cites the Warsaw and Montreal Conventions which govern airplane liability. If the passenger is injured, the amount of the payment is determined by the airline.
Making such a payment does not mean the airline admits liability. If passengers later win compensation in a lawsuit, the initial payment will be deducted from the sum of the compensation.
In 2013, Asiana Airlines made a similar payment offer to survivors of a crash landing in San Francisco which killed three people. The Korean airline offered $10,000 to each of the 288 surviving passengers, and said that the payment did not preclude them from filing lawsuits.
Dozens of lawsuits were filed against the airline and the plane’s manufacturer in the United States, and some later reached settlements for undisclosed amounts.
And last year, after a panel blew off an Alaska Airlines plane mid-flight, the airline offered a $1,500 payment to all passengers, as well as a full refund, to cover “incidental expenses to ensure their immediate needs were taken care of.”
