In a landmark judgement, the Ahmedabad Civil Court upheld the Consumer Education and Research Society's, an Ahmedabad-based consumer rights organisation, plea for higher compensation for the bereaved families of air crash victims of the Indian Airlines flight, that crashed near Ahmedabad airport in 1988. The crash killed 133 of its 135 passengers.
Indian Airlines had announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh (Rs 200,000) victims' families as a full and final settlement. CERS challenged the IA's decision in the high court of Gujarat, quoting Articles 12 and 21 of the constitution of India, stating that the IA could not take an arbitrary and unjust decision by fixing a flat rate of compensation ignoring factors such as the age of the deceased, income, occupation, future prospects and life expectancy.
CERS contended that the act of omission or negligence on the part of the pilots, the airlines and the Airport Authority of India were, in fact, acts of recklessness and fell within the purview of Article 25 of the Second Schedule to the Carriage by Air Act, 1972. The court upheld the contention and doubled the compensation.
Chandrikaben Anilbhai Parekh and her two sons, family members of the deceased Anilbhai Parekh, pleaded for higher compensation and CERS joined the suit.
Chandrikaben and her two sons won the case and were awarded a compensation of Rs 4.1 lakh with interest at the rate of 6 per cent. As IA had paid Rs 2 lakh, the court asked the airlines and Airport Authority to pay the remainder in two installments.
"The judgement in this case was followed in deciding other claims. The Court observed that it was not the error of the pilot alone but also the failure of the Airport Authority that resulted in the accident," said a spokesperson of CERS.
The Court of Inquiry, formed immediately after the crash, granted permission to CERS to appear before it on behalf of the consumers of air services.
The Court ended its hearings on January 19, 1989.
CERS joined in the suits filed by the relatives of the crash victims and made submissions in the City Civil Court, once it learned that most of the relatives were not ready to accept Rs 2 lakh as full and final settlement. Under the Fatal Accidents Act, no damages are payable unless negligence is proved.
CERS by virtue of attending the Court of Inquiry's hearings proved that the navigational aids at Ahmedabad airport were not functioning accurately and the Airport Authority of India had not taken any steps to commission the vital navigation, landing aid.
Again the Airport Authority of India failed to ensure that the latest weather information was communicated by Air Traffic Controllers to the aircraft before the accident. CERS contended that the accident claims under the Motor Vehicles Act and the Carriage by Air Act, 1972 could not be compared.
The evidence given by Vinodkumar Tripathy and Ashok Agarwal, who survived the crash, was treated as evidence in all the suits which came for hearing.
In their submission to the court, Agarwal and Tripathy had said that there was a thick fog on the day of the crash. CERS advocates in the case contended that the pilots failed to take reasonable care expected of them and rather proceeded to land the plane and hit the ground owing to poor visibility.