flydubai to give $20,000 per crash victim to family

Priority is to identify and contact families of victims and provide immediate support , the airline said in a statement

Dubai-based budget carrier flydubai today announced a $20,000 financial assistance to the kin of each of the 62 passengers, including an Indian couple, aboard its ill- fated flight bound for Russia that crashed after missing the runway in bad weather.

Flydubai, a sister firm of Dubai's flagship carrier Emirates Airlines, said in a statement that at present, its priority is to identify and contact the families of the victims on board flight FZ981 and provide immediate support to those affected.

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"flydubai will additionally organise a programme of hardship payments to the families amounting to $20,000 per passenger, in accordance with our Conditions of Carriage, with the aim of addressing immediate financial needs," the statement said.

The Boeing 737-800, which took off from her for the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, exploded into a fireball early yesterday after it was believed to have missed the runway amid bad weather during its second attempt to land after circling for several hours.

All 55 passengers and seven crew members on board the airliner were declared instantly dead. The deceased, that included Indians Mohan Shyam and his wife Anju Kathirvel Aiyappa, were mostly Russians.

The passengers included 33 women, 18 men and four children while of the seven crew members, five were men and two were women.

Representatives from the state-owned budget airline were arriving in Rostov-on-Don - a city of some 1 million around 1,000 kilometres south of Moscow to aid the criminal probe into whether pilot error, a technical fault or poor weather was to blame for the accident.

Flydubai was set up by the Dubai government in 2008 to mirror the success its flagship carrier Emirates Airline has had in long-haul flying in the low-cost segment.