Crossair announces compensation plan

Investigators wearing protective masks as they investigate the wreckage of the Crossair jet Keystone

Crossair says it is to pay immediate compensation to relatives of the victims and survivors of Saturday's crash.

Crossair chief, André Dosé, announced on Monday the airline would pay SFr30,000 to relatives and survivors of the crash of Crossair flight LX3597 from Berlin to Zurich.

“We want to act quickly and unbureaucratically,” he said.

The payment is supposed to cover immediate expenses such as recovery efforts, repatriation and funeral costs.

Crossair will make further payments to victims’ families and survivors in the coming weeks.

The amounts will depend on the actual damage suffered by each passenger.

Victim list

On Monday Zurich police released a list of the names of the 24 people killed. The nine survivors, two of whom are said to be in critical condition in hospital, have not yet been identified.

Five Swiss nationals were among the victims, three of whom were members of the crew. There were also 11 passengers from Germany, three from Israel, and one each from Canada, Sweden, Spain, Holland and Ghana aboard the plane.

A memorial service for the victims of the crash is planned to be held in Basel cathedral on Thursday.

Experienced pilot

One of the two pilots, who were both killed in the crash, was an experienced pilot with a record of more than 19,000 flying hours.

But Hans-Ulrich Lutz had spent most of his career on other types of aircraft and had only done 300 flying hours in the RJ-100 Jumbolino, the type of aircraft that crashed on Saturday.

However, Dosé emphasised that Lutz was a good pilot and defended his qualifications.

“I want to emphasise that this was a pilot with lots of flight experience. I also flew with him when I started and I can judge that,” he said during a news conference at the airline’s headquarters in Basel.

The co-pilot of Lutz, who worked for Crossair for 22 years, was the 25-year-old Stefan Loehrer, who had only finished his training with Crossair in Januar this year.

Although both flight recorders, known as the “black boxes”, have been recovered and are under examination in Paris, it is still unclear who was at the controls when the 97-seat airliner went down.

Results of the examinations are not expected before Wednesday.

swissinfo with agencies