DOT Fines Asiana Airlines $500,000 for Failing to Comply With Its U.S. Family Assistance Obligations
March 3, 2014
DOT fined Asiana Airlines $500,000 on February 25th for failing to comply with assurances in its Family Assistance Plan including failing to publish and implement a reliable toll-free telephone number that families of passengers in an accident can utilize, failure to timely notify families of passengers involved in the accident and failure to commit sufficient resources to carry out its Family Assistance Plan.
The Foreign Air Carrier Family Support Act of 1997 requires foreign air carriers to assure DOT and the National Transportation Safety Board (“NTSB”) that various services will be provided to passengers and their families in the event of an aircraft accident that results in a major loss of life. These assurances are filed with both DOT and the NTSB, and are commonly known as a carrier’s Family Assistance Plan. A carrier’s Family Assistance Plan must include assurances about 18 specific actions a carrier will take in the event of an aircraft accident, such as publishing a toll-free telephone number for families to contact the airline, notifying family members, compiling a list of passengers, and returning possessions of people who were injured or killed in an aircraft incident.
According to DOT, for more than 18 hours following the accident, Asiana failed to publish and provide a reliable, toll-free telephone number and staff to receive calls from families of passengers involved in the accident. During that time the only available telephone number was the reservations line and locating that number on Asiana’s website took significant effort. Second, DOT alleged Asiana took two days to contact the families of just three-quarters of the passengers and that some families were not notified until five days after the accident. Third, according to DOT, Asiana chose to rely on the assistance of another carrier (a codeshare partner), during the initial few days of the incident. Asiana employees did not take over the handling of family assistance until five days following the incident and it took two full days for the airline to send its trained representatives to SFO. DOT also pointed out that the Asiana representatives lacked adequate staff to communicate in the passengers’ language and had no preexisting contract for the cleaning and returning of passenger property.
In its defense, Asiana specified numerous actions it did take including sending both its Senior Vice President and Executive Vice President to the accident site, assigning a special assistance representative to each passenger or family, staffing a 24-hour Family Assistance Desk and provision of clothing and food, crisis counseling, child care services and expense money. Asiana also advised it experienced difficulty in contacting passengers and their family members because it is the practice of travel agencies in China not to provide telephone numbers for passengers. In addition, many passengers left their cell phones behind when evacuating the aircraft making contact difficult.
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