Originally Posted by
jimmc66
This is an ex-gratia payment for expenses with no admission of liability nor any requirement for the recipient to "sign away" their rights.
This payment should have been proffered within a day or two of the accident, as has been done by other airlines who've had accidents.
Another gaffe by Asiana, IMHO.
Makes me want to know more about what they did for the passengers in the immediate aftermath. It SHOULD have consisted of:
- Swarms of United agents (which is who they would presumably have partnered with for such a contingency) seeking out and making themselves available to assist passengers
- Assistance, including expediting and acting as couriers, for people to replace passports and other documents, as well as procuring things like medications and CPAP machines that people presumably left on the plane.
- Hotels and meals, booked and paid without condition (unlike that mechanical UA fiasco in Anchorage, I think, where the hotel tried to insist that people use personal credit cards, even though many pax didn't have one).
- Generous assistance in booking people to wherever they wanted to be, as well as flying relatives to those who were injured.
- A prepaid card with a significant sum ($500-$1000) for replacing clothes and other items.
I really hope that all of these were taken care of, no questions asked, but it would be really good to know. If you don't want people to grab their stuff in a future emergency, make it publically clear that everything was fully taken care of right away.