Parents of 16 high school students who died in the Germanwings air tragedy wrote an open letter to Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr, saying they were insulted by the compensation offer of the air carrier.
Written in German language and made public on Tuesday by the lawyers of victims' families, the letter accused the parent company of Germanwings of neglecting them, Time reports. The ill-fated plane, Flight 9525, was deliberately crashed by a young mentally-ill co-pilot of the airline on March 24, 2014, killing 156 passengers and crew on board.
Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot, deliberately locked out the jet's captain and crashed the plane in the French Alps.
The parents point out that the offer of €45,000 (equivalent to about $49,200) for each victim is just the weekly pay of Spohr from Lufthansa. That measure of life by the European air carrier is "deeply insulting" for the pain and suffering they underwent. They said that they expected the CEO to say a few personal words with them during the funeral service in Haltern and the memorial service in Cologne, but he allegedly did not speak to them.
The amount, if correct, is way below the $170,000 guaranteed under the Montreal Convention, signed in 1999, which Germany is a signatory. It is the minimum liability, regardless of fault. An airline, according to the treaty, is not liable to compensate victims over the minimum if it could prove it was not negligent.
The convention replaced the older Warsaw Convention, signed in 1929, which set minimum liability at $8,300. Since some countries, like Russia and Indonesia, did not sign the Montreal treaty, it explains the wide range of compensation airlines pay families of victims of plane crashes.
Estimated average settlement is highest for U.S. citizens at $4.5 million. The average for Germans is $1,3 million, while for Chinese it is $0.5 million and $0.4 million for Indonesians, according to Time.
However, a Lufthansa spokesman belied the accusations in the letter, saying that Spohr exerted efforts to speak to families of victims and attended many memorial services, including the one in Haltern, where the school of the 16 students is located.