Airline lacking compassion
Published on: Monday, July 28, 2014
THE HAGUE, (Netherlands): The family of two brothers killed in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 called the carrier rigid and bureaucratic Saturday, saying it has offered them no professional grief counselling in more than a week and refused to organise a flight home to Houston for the boys' grandmother.Harun Calehr, the uncle of victims Miguel and Shaka Panduwinata, said the family's frustration has grown as they felt they had to haggle for help from the airline in the days after the Boeing 777 was shot down over Ukraine on July 17."You know, one would have hoped that there would have been more compassion, more understanding, and not such a rigid, bureaucratic attitude towards everything that we need," Calehr said.
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"Everything that we got, we had to fight for," Calehr said.Along with other relatives of victims, the family was put up in a hotel at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport and was tended to by Malaysia Airlines staff in the days after the disaster.Miguel and Shaka Panduwinata were on their way from Amsterdam to Bali for a vacation with their grandmother when Flight 17 was shot down, killing all 298 passengers and crew.The family complains that there has been no offer of any grief counselling by the airline, that it refused to pay for the boys' grandmother to fly home to Texas from Amsterdam and that it has not yet paid out an initial reimbursement of $5,000 it pledged to victims' next of kin.
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Addressing the issue of the grandmother's flight, Malaysia Airlines said in a written response emailed to The Associated Press that only "immediate next-of-kin" are eligible for travel reimbursements. But it added, "this situation will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis."Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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"The documentations are being prepared as we speak," it said. - AP
