Missing jet: Heirs to be paid
2007-01-22 23:45
Jakarta - Indonesian airline Adam Air will pay 500m rupiah (about $55 000) compensation for each passenger on its plane that vanished three weeks ago carrying 102 people, a company executive said on Monday.
"All passengers are insured, but as a show of our sympathy we have decided to give compensation of 500 million rupiah per passenger, to be given to their respective legal heirs," Adam Air president Adam Aditya Suherman told legislators here according to the Detikcom news portal.
The compensation would be paid in addition to the insurance money, he said.
Anyone claiming the money would have to provide a court document declaring them to be the legal heir of the missing passenger, Suherman said.
A company spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment.
The Adam Air Boeing 737-400 carrying 96 passengers and six crew vanished off the coast of Sulawesi island on January 1.
Efforts to locate the aircraft - which is believed to have crashed in the sea off the western coast of Sulawesi - have so far only turned up small pieces of debris.
Vice-president Jusuf Kalla said the search could not continue indefinitely, the official Antara news agency reported.
"The search for the missing plane certainly has a deadline. It is impossible to do the search continuously for a year," Kalla said.