HALIFAX - A lawyer for nearly 100 families of people
who died in the Swissair crash said he disagrees with the safety
board report saying the pilots could not have prevented the crash.
Mark
Moller said he agrees with most of the findings in the report of the
crash of Swissair Flight 111 prepared by the Transportation Safety
Board of Canada.
He said he uncovered many of the same causes and contributing
factors the TSB did in its $57 million investigation.
But he disagrees with TSB investigators when they say the fire
spread too fast for the pilots to land the plane safely in Halifax.
"I'm not prepared to buy into that conclusion. I think what they
should have done is immediately initiated a landing mode and gotten
themselves to Halifax," said Moller.
He said watched the TSB news conference on TV with the widow of
one of the men who died in the crash. He said it was sad to hear
that if the insulation on the plane had been fire-retardant, the
crash wouldn't have happened.
"This was an avoidable accident," Moller said. "It really didn't
have to happen, and that makes it very hard to swallow the
consequences when loved ones are no longer with their families."
Swissair has already paid most of his clients wrongful death
settlements, Moller said. Swissair and its insurance companies have
paid out an estimated $700 million US in settlements to surviving
family members.
Written by CBC News Online staff
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