Insurance payout for Air France

Undated file photo of an Airbus A330-200.

Air France is to receive an insurance cheque of 67.4 million euros (Dh343m) for the loss of its Airbus A330 over the Atlantic, one of its insurers said. The crashed aircraft was covered by several insurers including Axa Corporate Solutions, which is to pay out 12.5 per cent of the total bill, or 8.4 million euros, a spokeswoman for the insurance firm said. Under the terms of the Montreal Convention, the carrier Air France is also responsible for compensating the families of the 228 people lost in the June 1 Rio to Paris crash, for which it has separate insurance.
Asked about compensation for relatives, the Axa spokeswoman said it was "too soon to give a realistic figure." She said: "All entitled persons have yet to come forward, and as a result it has not yet been possible to evaluate the totality of individual situations." Brazilian and French navy crews have so far recovered the bodies of 44 crash victims off Brazil's coast. Speculation surrounding the crash has focused on the Airbus A330's airspeed sensors, known as pitot probes, which may have malfunctioned.
Meanwhile, Air France has upgraded all speed probes on its long-haul A330 and A340 aircraft in the wake of the deadly crash, a pilots' union said. An SNPL union spokesman Erick Derivry said he was informed at the weekend that Air France, which accelerated a programme to replace the suspect pitots in the wake of the crash, had completed the work. *AFP