Kathmandu. Ahmedabad: A claim of around Rs 40 billion (Rs 64 billion) will be incurred from thursday’s plane crash in Ahmedabad, according to Indian reinsurer GIC Riley.
This compensation claim is one of the biggest for the Indian reinsurance industry in terms of aircraft crashes.
Air India’s AI-171 Boeing Dreamliner plane crashed, killing 270 people, including 241 passengers on board.
London surveyors and lawyers are now camping in Ahmedabad to assess the devastation, prepare various damage reports, including where and passenger liabilities. Since the number of foreigners on board the plane is also significant, the passenger liability claim will be about three times the claim of the aircraft than the claim of aircraft damage.
According to preliminary estimates, the ship’s reinsurer will lose $80 million. An additional $400 million will be spent on the engine. But the total liability insurance for passengers and people who died on the crash site, numbered around 270 so far, will be around $350 million, Asian Insurance Post quoted GIC Rico sources as saying. Indian insurers, including GIC, account for only 5 per cent of this.
Based on the final agreement and legal claims, it was earlier expected that the total insurance payments, including aircraft and passenger liability risks, could exceed Rs 10 to Rs 16 billion.
From April 1, Air India renewed its $20 billion comprehensive insurance policy (for the aircraft) of $1.5 billion, with multinational AIG as the principal reinsurer. Nearly 95 per cent of Air India insurance is reinsurance by a group of reinsurers led by AIG, AXA and Allianz.
According to The Asian Insurance Post, Swarup Kumar Sahu, senior insurance analyst at London-based data and analytics company GlobalData, in a statement, “The crash is estimated to cost the insurance industry more than $200 million, including the value of aircraft between $75 million and $80 million, and liability risks to passengers under the Montreal Convention and domestic law.”
