ABSTRACT
On 25 July 2000, Air France Concorde flight 4590 crashed in a fiery explosion into a hotel shortly after take-off from Charles de Gaulle airport. All 109 passengers and crew on board were killed instantly while four people on the ground, employees of the hotel, also lost their lives. Two weeks after the disaster, Mr Phillippe Calavia, Deputy Managing Director of Air France, announced that the relatives of all 113 victims would be compensated.1 Mr Calavia explained that, while insurance companies were bound to compensate relatives of those on board the Concorde, it had not been clear about the compensation owed to victims on the ground. ‘Even though it is not spelt out in the texts’, he said, ‘Air France will also compensate the families of victims who were on the ground’.2
