Beyond the Black Box: Navigating Justice and Compensation After Air India Flight AI 171 wth Mr Verna

Good morning, good evening ladies and gentlemen around the world. I welcome you to a podcast with Mr. Verna beyond the black box. This podcast is dedicated to shedding light on the complexities of aviation disaster and the path to justice for victims. We are recording this live from New Delhi, India today and Mr. Verna is in the United States. Today is the 2nd of July 2025. 6 weeks after the devastating crash of Air India flight 171.

This Boeing 787 Dreamliner bound for London tragically crashed shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad on 12th June impacting a residential area. We know the accident claimed 251 lives on board with only one survivor and tragically 19 more on the ground. Hospital staff. Black boxes have been recovered and investigations are on the way. Mr. Verna is a renowned US aviation accident attorney.

As our research confirmed, he is probably one of the most leading investigated litigation lawyers in the United States for aviation disasters. His firm alongside our US-based investigation partners, premier consultancy and investigations based in India and partner companies in the United Kingdom and Portugal are all geared up to assist next of kins in achieving right compensation far exceeding the Montreal convention limits. Mr. Verna, thank you for joining us today from the United States, especially as we in India and globally grapple with the immense tragedy of Air India flight 171 on June 12th. Could you please begin by explaining what you know about the disaster at this stage?

And from your perspective, what are the immediate priorities for investigators at this critical early stage as they work to uncover the truth of what happened? Well, thank you for the opportunity to address and families that have been impacted by this terrible tragedy. And let me first, before I say anything about the law or the facts of this case, offer my sincere condolences and sympathies to those families. I've done this for 46 years. I know how it is at this time to feel helpless and to not really know where to turn.

And my best advice to all of the now is to take the time to appreciate your loved ones through the grieving process. Do not make any rash decisions now, which is why I'm doing podcasts and I'm not over in India right now. I think there's plenty of time for the families to deal with legal got more personal things to deal with and we're certainly willing to help in any way we can with giving advice once things have solidified a little bit better as to what the facts are. From a legal technical standpoint, one of the interesting aspects of this case is that we have the airplane, we have the black boxes, we have the wreckage, we have the aircraft maintenance records, we have all of that information available or at least the accident investigators have that information available to them. In many cases I've had over the years where airplanes are over the sea or the black box is not recovered or there are certain key pieces of the wreckage that are un able to be located and reconstructed.

You have a problem in trying to piece this whole puzzle together. But here there's a lot of information that is publicly available that we already know. Unbelievably we have a CCTV video of the takeoff and the crash, which in and of itself is an very important and uncommon bit of evidence to have. And with that video, what anybody could see is the plane just stops flying. The tail is in the lower position.

It continues to descend down. That's a stall. The airplane stops flying. It has no thrust. There's a number of facts that we all know exist.

We haven't confirmed a lot of these details from the flight data recorder yet. That information will be supplied hopefully in the next month or two. But we know lost thrust. We know that the engines were not spooling up as one would expect as it was in the climbout phase. They were the there was very little noise engine noise from the video.

We know that the landing gear was tilted up as if in a process of being retracted but couldn't retract. We know that the ram air turbine known as the RAT was deployed which is a classic example of electric electronic and hydraulic failure on board the aircraft. Pilot issued a mayday saying no thrust to the tower immediately after takeoff. All of those facts we know without any reference to the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder and all of those facts certainly suggest that there was a simultaneous dual engineed failure on this aircraft just as started its takeoff roll and climb out. Now why was engine failure?

That's that's something that will take a long time to evaluate. Clearly the fact that both engines failed at the same time. Had one engine only failed, the engine would have continued to operate and the plane could have done a goound and landed again. It didn't. Both failed at the same time.

The only commonality between the two engines really is the fuel or lack thereof. So, I'm not jumping to conclusions at this stage, but we can be pretty assured that this dual engine failure that occurred simultaneously is related to the lack of fuel getting to both engines when they had to get to the engines. So, I think that's an area that the investigator is going to be looking at very closely. Mike, we understand that the aircraft accident investigations bureau of India with assistance from the United States NTSB has moved quickly to recover and analyze the black boxes. What kind of vital information do these black boxes typically contain and how central is their role in determining the cause of a complex crash like this?

The black boxes are actually two bits of data recorders. It's called the flight data recorder and that records dozens of different parameters of the flight. It records what the flap angles were. It records what the thrust of the engine was. It records altitude settings were.

It records a number of objective data because these are really flying computers nowadays and there's enormous amount of data that the flight data recorders record. There's also something called the cockpit voice recorder. And the cockpit voice recorder records the voices that are going on in the cockpit which would be the communications between the captain and the first officer. And that's also critical to know because all we know publicly right now is the communication to the tower calling for a mayday saying no thrust. We don't know what communications were made within the cockpit yet until that is released.

So analyzing the objective data, the verifiable data, the technical data from the flight data recorder along with listening to the cockpit voice recorder as to the communications between the crew is going to help us enorm enormously narrow down any issues in this case. For example, one issue that was initially considered a possible theory for the case was that the flap settings were inappropriate on TA. Setting aside the fact that even the flap setting even if the flap settings were inappropriate, it wouldn't have caused a stall like this. We'll know exactly what the flap settings are from the fight. Another argu and if they either were or were not in the proper setting then we can evaluate whether area has any responsibility and whether or not that actually caused or contributed to the crash itself.

Unlikely in my view that it would cause the crash, but we'll know for sure whether that's even an issue. Same thing with a bird strike. There were a lot of speculation about bird strikes. Well, first off, you don't see any birds in the CCTV video, so that's odd. But the flight data recorder and certainly cognitive recorder if the crew had encumbered had encountered you know a big flock of birds you would you would get that data from that.

So what we from these things is objective data that can narrow down Come on. I lost you there. Yeah, I lost you, too. Anyway, we can I don't know what happened. You logged in from a different device now.

No, I'm I'm logged in from my iPad that I was using before. I don't know what happened. Not an issue. Not an issue. I think we just repeat this question and then we can edit it properly.

Okay. Well, I think my answer was complete. You just edit out the blank out. However you want to handle is fine. Not an issue.

We I'll have it edited. Now, one of the questions that I need to ask is you know you mentioned that it could be lack of fuel into the engines. Would the black box be able to determine that it was a fuel problem?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the black box would certainly be able to tell us whether or not there was any failure in the fuel delivery system on board the aircraft because that's one of the many that it evaluates. Now, in fact, both engines were starved of fuel and that's what they got down at the same time. That could either be because they got no fuel or they got contaminated fuel.

Now this is we're getting into the realm of speculation because we don't have these details yet, but the flight data recorder will certainly provide far more information than we currently have as to whether or not there was a failure or a shutdown of any of the fuel delivery systems on board this aircraft. And that's one of the reasons why it's critically important to wait for the family to wait till we get full information from the flight data recorder. And that report is going to be issued in the next couple of months. The final report, I think a preliminary report is going to be issued in a couple of days. And it's very important to wait until we see what the actual facts are before people start you know, making legal claims, which we don't know if there's going to be factual support for or not, until we actually know what the evidence is.

Beyond the black boxes, what are the type of physical and circumstantial evidence will investigators be meticulously examining at the crash site and in their broad analysis to piece together the sequence of events? What do you think they would be doing? Well, they're going to be looking at everything. I don't think they're they're going to limit themselves to simply fuel starvation causing a dual engine flame out. I suspect what they're going to look be looking at and what they should be looking at is what impact the weather, it was a very hot day, what impact the weather may have had on things.

Certainly evaluating the aircraft maintenance. I believe the right engine had recently been overhauled or replaced only a few months before the accident. The left engine not. So all the records related to that. The refueling vendor at the airport.

I'm sure they're going to go through the refueling procedures and the records of the refuelers to what kind of was unloaded onto that aircraft before it took off. Certainly the pilots training and backgrounds and any issues with respect to their qualifications is going to be fully evaluated. Airport procedure you know generally was the takeoff protocol that was employed by this crew in conformity with what the takeoff protocol should be. So it'll be a wide- ranging investigation. I hope I'm I think the conclusion that they're probably going to reach is that both engines failed simultaneously.

Why and who's responsible for that is for another day. Given you know the Air India 171 was an international flight the Montreal Convention is undoubtedly the foundational legal instrument governing liability. Could you briefly explain the core principles of the Montreal Convention concerning airline liability in such devastating disasters?

Yeah. The Montreal Convention is an international treaty signed by 180 some odd countries governs what happens in the event of international crashes. This would be this case would be governed by the Montreal Convention because the flight departed from India which is a signatory to the convention destined for UK which is a signatory to the convention. The question then is who does the convention apply to?

And it's very important to understand especially for the next of kin who may get confused about what their rights are under the convention the passengers of the fair payers of the plane have the right to obtain light compensation from the air carrier air India up a certain limit which we can get into in a moment without any proof of fault. So, it's an absolute liability claim against the airline up to that certain limit. The people that were on the ground that were not passengers and they didn't sign a contract of carriage or buy it with the airline. So, they are not do not benefit from the absolute liability of the Montreal Convention. Same goes for the crew.

There were, I believe, 12 crew on board this aircraft. They are not fair paying passengers and their families are not entitled. Now, of course, they would not be suing themselves because of some pilot error. But if in fact there's some third party involvement in this, like a refueling station or like a boat or GE product liability claim, the Montreal Convention doesn't apply to those. So I want to be first clear that the Montreal Convention is only for those people who are passengers on board this plane the 241 I believe or 242 in so far as their claims against the airline only not in so far as their cases against Boeing or GE or any other third party.

So as to that those claims from passengers against Air India up to special drawing rights of 151,880 which translates to about 15 million rupees Indian rupees there is absolute liability of the airline beyond that the airline has the burden of proving that it was not negligent or that the sole cause of the accident was due to a third party. If if and that's a burden of proof on the airline to prove that they're negligent, not a burden of proof on the family to prove that the airline was negligent. That's a big difference in the convention. If the airline is unable to prove that it was not negligent at all or that the sole cause of the accident was some third party then it's liable above the 50 million rupee to the amount of full damages that are awardable to the family based on the jurisdiction that family is in. And that gets us to a whole another issue of which court is the appropriate court to be litigating these cases.

Mike what is the in your analysis at this point of time what is the type of compensation that can be given to these victims the next token of the of the victims in a situation like this where it is a fuel starvation concern well if you have a case in the United states, then US law, procedural law would apply, which allows the parties to subpoena records and to get information that maybe they would not otherwise be able to get under the Indian procedures or possibly even under the UK. The amount of damages would be dependent upon which law the court decides apply the law of where the accident happened in India or I would apply the law of say in the United States if you had a good case against Boeing or GE as an example we just finished resolving a number of cases arrives the Ethiopian airlines flight 302 and Lion Air involving the 737 Max which resulted in a criminal conviction frankly of Boeing in which they had to pay over one and a half billion dollars just because of the conviction. We were able in that case because the evidence was so strong of a design defect in that 737 aircraft, a different aircraft than this one that the courts applied US law even though those accidents were in Indonesia and Ethiopia. And that is hugely different because the measure of damages under American law includes loss of earnings, loss of financial support of the family from the decedent but goes beyond and compensates for the loss of the care, comfort, compassion, society of the decedent. General damages and the determining factor the determining parties to monitor to quantify that is a jury which means it's 12 people in Chicago Illinois a pretty liberal jurisdiction which is the headquarters of Boeing if you are in an Indian court the law would be Indian law no question about it in a UK court the law would be a UK law no question about it so the goal is to assuming the facts take you there and you're able to have a sufficient case product liability against an American manufacturer.

The goal would be litigate those cases in the United States because that maximizes your ability to recover. Now having said that the case against Air India, you may have problem bringing that in the United States because the US would not have jurisdiction over Air India under a Montreal Convention claim. This is one of the reasons why I think it's best for families to wait to see what plays out because it turns out that the overwhelming weight of the evidence is that there was no pilot error that there was no fault of Air India in causing this crash but that there was a systemic failure in the fuel delivery system of this aircraft. Then it would behoove the families not to sue Air India in the UK because that would then prevent them from being able to execute Boeing in the United States. You can't be filing lawsuits in two different jurisdictions and expect both courts to allow two cases to continue that involve the same issues.

And I bring that up because notice that some lawyers have been advertising that their strategy and how to approach these cases is to file in the UK against Air India and in the US against Boeing. And I think the likelihood of being able to keep the case against Boeing in the United States is very slim if you already have a case going against Air India in the UK. The US courts could bump the case back over, probably would bump the case under call forum non-convenience back to the UK which is the statutory jurisdiction under the Montreal Convention for those families. Mike, you mentioned that you know the crew is not entitled to compensation except what Air India would provide. What is the liability?

Let me let me stop there. The crew is entitled to compensation from anybody that is at fault in this action. So if the Boeing or GE are at fault or if some refueling operation there at the airport is at fault, they have rights. They don't have rights under the Montreal Convention for absolute liability of Air India because that's their employer and they weren't. Do you have any idea right?

Do you have any idea Mike that let us say that you are playing just by the Montreal convention? What what do the crew get as compensation? Well, the crew aren't covered under Montreal Convention. Under US law, and frankly, I'm not versed well enough in India law to know how it works. But under US law, there's workers compensation benefits that they get as any employee would get if they were injured or killed during the course of work.

So that would be dictated by whatever the local law is in terms of what the claims are for workers compensation benefits but they could notwithstanding what compensation they're entitled to against Air India under workers compensation law they would still have a claim against any third party whether it be in India or the United States if there's negligence that could be shown on that party that was intrib. So basically what you're saying is it is between Air India and the terms of employment of the guru that would determine the compensation or any labor liability laws in India that would sort of determine as to what the victims of the what the victims would get if they were a crew to the Air India. Exactly. But the crew would have the exact same rights as the passengers and the same rights as anybody that was killed on the ground against Boeing and GE or any US manufacturer in a US court. They would have the exact same standing in a case like that.

That's because that's not involving the Montreal Convention. So which means basically unless we are able to take the case into a product liability case the crew and the people who died on the ground would have very little claim on the Montreal convention liabilities. The Montreal Convention only applies to passengers. So if we're talking about the crew or we're talking about the people on the ground, it's not a Montreal convention issue to begin with. The people on the ground clearly have a case against somebody.

Something happened here. They were on they were on the ground an airplane crashed and you know terrible things happened. So they clearly have a case but they would have the burden of proving that case whether that's a case against Air India directly or it's a case against the local refueling or the case against the airport or a case against Boeing or any product manufacturer. So they would have the case but it wouldn't be governed by Montreal convention. It wouldn't be absolute liability like it is for the passengers up to 15 million rupees.

So they but they would have to prove that the crew would have the same case. They just don't have a case against Air India because they are the crew and employees of Air India. Okay. The passengers have the automatic liability because of Montreal. You see, Air India has already made public announcements regarding interim compensation and in some reports a fixed amount for the deceased families separate from the Montreal Conventions SDR based liability.

From your legal vantage point, what is your interpretation of these early offers from the airline and how might they relate to broader strategy? Well very common by the way this is nothing unique that Air India is doing and I might point out it's not Air India doing it anyway. It's its insurers who are Lloyds of London that are really behind all of this. It's very common to make advanced pay to families modest advanced payments to help for the economic hardship on the heirs in the immediate aftermath of an accident like this. So this is nothing unusual.

It's admission of liability of the airline because of the making the payments. It's they'll cast it as a humanitarian issue really. The Montreal Convention mandates that advanced payments be made anyway. So, it's not really a choice that they're making. The payments themselves, there's no reason for anybody not to accept them.

Certainly don't sign any release or any agreement in exchange for that other than possibly a receipt. The big fear is if the Air India or its insurers approach families trying to settle the entire claim, not just making an advanced payment now, but to sell settle their entire claim. Then the they'd be very careful because at that point they families would be asked to sign a release and the release could bar any claims they have for damages beyond the SBR limits of 50 million rupees against the airline and any claims beyond that against Boeing or GE or any third party. So this is again another reason why I strongly recommend that families take no action in trying to negotiate anything with Air India or its insurers yet. They certainly don't sign anything yet.

If if they get an advanced payment at the Montreal Convention mandates that there be there be then they accept that. That's not a problem. But by all means don't anything because the insurers are want to make sure that they limit the number of claims to as few as possible and the best way to do that is to go to people when they are the most vulnerable which is right now. Mike, would it be possible for you to share with me so that I could sort of spread it across in India?

What is the language that the next of kins should be signing? Should they be receiving any compensation? They they shouldn't payment. They shouldn't sign anything. I mean, they shouldn't the Yeah.

The Montreal Convention specifically mandates it's a long document. One of the provisions specifically requires the airline to make advanced payments. So the fact that how much it is dependent upon you know changes that have been made to the SDR limits and things like that over time because the convention was passed in 1999. We're now in 2025. It's been updated over the years with higher limits.

But typically it's in the range of to $30,000 US somewhere in there. I'm not sure how that translates into rupees or exactly how much has been offered to these families, but it's not clo they're not offering typically they don't offer at this stage of process the full SDR limits. They offer some payments and those should have no strings attached to them because that's mandated by the Montreal Convention. So there the family shouldn't sign anything at most if they want to in order to you know cash the check or to receive the deposit acknowledge receipt of the money that's all they do is acknowledge receipt of the money not waving any claims not releasing anybody then that's something that could be considered but I would I would strongly recommend a family member not sign anything because the insurers have to these payments whether you sign something or not. Okay.

So, best not but supposing you know they just dep they take your bank account details and deposit the money online. Would that be an acknowledgement having received the you know would it yeah they've received the money that's fine. The issue here is not actually getting an advanced payment for humanitarian purposes. The issue is the family giving up anything by doing that?

Are they releasing any claims by receiving the money? The answer to that is no. They are not. If they start signing a document, if they're told to sign something, then we have to start getting wary because I have seen cases in the past where people that you know are still in the grieving process. They're still confused.

They're not quite sure what their legal rights are. And all of a sudden they're offered you know what they consider to be a significant amount of money. And all they have to do is sign a piece of paper. And they sign the piece of paper. They're offered that significant amount of money.

And then it turns out that piece of paper constitutes a release of everybody, not just the airline, but the manufacturers, the Boeing, the GE, everybody, because they're all insured by Lloyds of London. Anyway, I mean, the cold heart reality here is that the real money that's going into these cases that will solve them is coming out of the London markets. And there's a number of syndicates in the London market. Some of those syndicates insure Boeing, some of those syndicates insure Air India, some of those syndicates insure GE. So it's it's the you know they're looking at protecting them more than they are protecting their families.

Absolutely. You know it's a very difficult time for people whether you know because they need the money and they don't know what to sign what not to sign and should they sign a document which sort of you know debars them from any future claims is going to be a very difficult time. Well, they shouldn't they couldn't sign anything. That's a savas course, you see, because accepting a quick early settlement from the airline will debar them from any future claims. And that is the danger that the next of kins would be in.

Now, now tell me who's the next of kin for the victims. Next of well again that to a large extent depends on what court you're in. The United States law may be different from UK or typically it's the spouse it's if someone is married it's the spouse and the offspring of the decedent which would be children and spouse. Sometimes it will go up to parents. It'll be a vertical you know hierarchy of parents and children as well as spouse.

In some cases it will not be the parents. If they're not financially dependent in any way on the decedent if the decedent is unmarried has no children that be the parents. If there are no parents then it would be siblings. So every case is different depending on the family profile. And it also depends again as I say as to what jurisdiction you're in.

If it's a case filed in an Indian court against a refueling agency or some local defendant then Indian law would dictate who has rights to make a claim for wrongful death. If it's filed in the United States then US law would apply as to who has those rights. But typically it's the most immediate family not extended family. So cousins, brothers, in-laws typically don't have any right recover even siblings unless decedent had no spouse, no children, no parents, then typically the dece the siblings also don't have a right to recover. But that again depends on which jurisdiction you're so it's also very difficult for the airline to decide as to who in the family needs to sign for compensation that they are giving.

Yeah. Well, in most jurisdictions, they will there is a certificate of inheritance or a legal framework. In the United States, we have what's called the probate code. If you're settling these cases in India, then I'm sure you have local laws that dictate who can who is an heir of right. So, the airline, depending on whether it's a UK resident or Canadian or Indian, family, the airline is going to look at the law of the domicile of the decedent and determine who is the rightful heir under that law and those the people that the payment will be made to, and those are the people that would then pay sign the release.

Mike, would it be the citizenship of the country or the location where you are staying? Well, under the Montreal Convention, it's the permanent and principal residence of the passenger, not of the heirs, that determines jurisdiction. And nationality or citizenship is not the determining factor. It's it's it's res. I understand.

And then you know from our perspective in India is to get the families the grieving families their rightful compensation and we need to draw up a strategy that sort of helps the victims to be able to achieve this. What would you suggest that we do in the interim period between the release of the investigation report and now? Well, from now until you know, just a few days from now, I think July 11th is when they're supposed to release a preliminary report, which only be a four or fivepage report. I would do absolutely nothing in terms of retain counsel or anything to that regard. On July 11th, we'll get a report that probably I'm going to speculate doesn't tell us a heck of a lot more than we already know because it's a preliminary report.

But the Montreal Convention mandates that the and the international conventions for aviation accidents mandate that a report be issued within a preliminary report be within 30 days. Thereafter, and I'm I'm I've heard anywhere from two to three months but we'll see. Thereafter there will be further evaluation of all these circumstantial factors that existed as well as significantly the analysis of the readouts from the FDR the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder and that will result in a full report. I've had cases where it's taken years before you get a full report because they can't find the wreckage or you know flight was lost over the ocean or the black box was never recovered. Here.

We've got all the data. So, it's just a matter of them looking at it, evaluating it, analyzing it, and coming to a conclusion. So I'm expecting in the next two to three months a final report, or at least a far more robust report than the preliminary one we're going to get in a couple days, is going to be issued. At that point, we will then have a much better idea of what the flap settings were, what the aircraft maintenance was, i.e. Whether or not there's been any negligence of Air India that contributed to this beyond the SDR limits of their absolute liability. And we'll also know if the fuel supply system shut down in any way which could implicate Boeing because it's Boeing's fuel supply system might implicate General Electric and its engines.

Might implicate the refueler if there was some record that they have of contaminated fuel being on board on the aircraft. We'll know a lot more in a couple of months. We'll know a little bit more in a couple of days. We'll know a lot more in a couple of months. And I think once you're armed with that data, and it's a lot of it is objective, verifiable data.

Once you're armed with that, then you develop a legal strategy as to where you want to pursue the claims. That's why I recommend to families that they wait until we get the information. Don't act without knowing what the information is. As an example. I mentioned it earlier as an example.

If it turns out, and I don't know what the flight data report is going to say, but if it turns out that the recorder suggests says that the flight flaps were in the proper position, that all protocols were properly followed by Air India, that all proper maintenance performed on the aircraft, that there's no evidence what that the crew was properly qualified, and they conducted themselves appropriately on takeoff. So if we look at this and they say there's no evidence here whatsoever that Air India had any responsibility for the accident but it shows that there was a problem in the fuel delivery system which is a Boeing issue then the last thing the families want to be doing is filing a lawsuit against Air India in the UK because you don't have once you do that you then minimize your chance of being able to continue to prosecute your case in the United States. The goal of every family would be to maximize their damages and maximize the ability to get discovery to see what happened in this accident through the litigation process. That's in a US court. If we had a case, say for example, a family filed a case in UK against Air India and then also filed a case in the United States against Boeing or GE.

Well, the very first thing Boeing would do is file a motion with the court in the US to transfer that case to the UK and they'd say, "This case is already ending in the UK. Send it back over there." In this case, it would be India. Mike, it would be India. Yes. Yeah.

But, but you lose. So, so you want to litigate a case against Air India if there's no case there and it's going to damage your good case against Boeing that is going to be in the jurisdiction you want. So that's why I say it's best to wait until you get all the facts and then you develop your legal strategy. You know, one of the notable things that I noticed Mr. Verna was that unlike some other American and British firms, your firm hasn't actively flown to India immediately after the tragedy attempting to directly detain the next of kin. Could you explain that this particular phenomena as to how you sort of are managing your strategy for this case because I think it would be irresponsible for me to number one interfere with the families at this time that they're most vulnerable.

I don't think that's morally appropriate to be talking to families now when they are so burdened with the significant losses they've encountered. But secondly, there's not much that I can do for them at this stage because I don't know what my evidence is going to be. My job as a lawyer is to marshall all the evidence I can develop a legal strategy based on that evidence and then try to prevail upon the finder of fact to generate a fair reasonable award to my clients based on that evidence. I don't even have any evidence yet. We have, you know, the CCT video.

We have all that, but we don't have evidence of fault for this. We know what happened. We don't know why it happened. And for me to be meeting with families now to suggest to them that I know why it happened, would be disingenuous to say the least. So, I don't I'm not an ambulance chaser.

I don't, you know, run after cases, and try to sign up a case and then figure out what the case is afterwards. I evaluate the situation. If people want to retain my services, I'm happy to do it. But there are too many people out there that I don't think have done this enough and understand the consequences the legal process and they just want to sign up a case. And when they get people to sign a retainer, then it's hard for the next opinion to get out of that retainer.

Now they're stuck with whoever they signed up with. This is a very big decisions for these families. One of the biggest decisions of their entire life. They just lost a loved one. My heart goes out to all of them and for them to then transition into, okay, now what do we do about it?

That's a big decision. Who who my lawyer is going to be? Who's who's my spokesperson?

Who's going to advocate for me? And they should do that based on a full understanding of what the facts of the case are and a legal strategy, not based on someone just trying to hit vulnerable. There is a term in the United States called ambulance chasers. Yeah. Often used to describe certain legal practices by firms dealing in aircraft disasters.

Could you explain what this term signifies and how your firm's ethical approach particularly through international partnership like with Premier Consultancy? How do you see that you know this term is not abused? Well, it's not a very good term to be called an ambulance chaser in the United States. I don't know if it's a term used in or not, but it's it involves attorneys that try to seek out clients sign retainers before the lawyers know if they have a case or don't have a case, but attempt to lead or mislead, depending on how you want to interpret it, the clients into thinking that there is a case. I approach it from the different standpoint.

I approach it from the standpoint of a professional ethical approach of what are the legal issues involved. What are the facts that we can marshall? What is in the best interest of the client to do and then present a cogent comprehensive analysis of what the plan of action would be. Not just sign clients up and then try to figure it out later because otherwise clients don't know what they bought, right?

I mean, they don't know who they're retaining because the lawyer doesn't have a plan of action either because they don't know the facts. I think right now we let the accident investigation take its course. We'll get a heck of a lot more information in a couple of months than we have now. Let the families grieve and try to get their senses back about them. Deal with these legal issues and then when they're not in such a vulnerable vision position then I think that's the appropriate talking to attorneys and then the attorneys are in a better position to give them a plan of action based on the this the status of the investigation.

I should point out, by the way, there's there's a two-year statute of limitations under the Montreal Convention, meaning that the families have the pastors that want to sue Air India or make a claim against Air India, they have two years to do that. That's a long time. There's there's no reason to rush to get a lawyer in two weeks or two months. You've got two years to make the claim there. There may be depending on jurisdiction there may be as little as a one-year statute against claims against other third parties.

A claim against Boeing United States would be two years. So there's plenty of time. If it's if it's less than two years under the laws of India as to a particular party, it's it's still a year. And we are only three post accident. So there's plent there's no need to rush.

There's a lot of reasons not to rush into making a decision like this. And I and that's why I'm not over there now. And you know, one of the things that we need to advise everyone is not to make quick settlements or take up unsolicited approaches. Yeah. Yeah.

The that would be the key for the next kins to actually be doing. Yeah. I sadly have to report some experience, you know, with people that I had met with in other cases, not this case, but over 40 years, you know, I've seen a lot of situations. And there's a lot of folks that I have met with over the years, families that lost loved ones in these terrible accidents. And some decided to retain and others decided to accept the money that Boeing or the airline was willing to pay and not retain us.

And I've told them that's entirely your decision, of course, but understand that in exchange you accepting the amount of money that they're willing to pay, you have to sign a release and that releases everybody. You can never make a claim again. And I've had situations where sure enough, a year later, year and a half later, we've developed more evidence on the case. We've proceeded, you know, with the litigation in the US court. We've established that American law was going to apply for damages.

And then the clients that retained us got 10 to 20fold the amount of money, 10 to 20 times the amount of money as the ones settled early on in the process. And I couldn't help them. They would call me and say, "Can you come back?

Can I can I reinvive my case?" I said, "You signed a release. I can't file a lawsuit against the party you've already released." and that's exactly what the insurers want families to do is to sign the release early, cap their liability exposure bond. Understand for the for the insurers in London whether they're insuring Air India or Boeing or E or anybody else the insurers have one goal and one goal only and that's to spend as little money as possible on these claims. And any way they can spend as little money as possible they're do that and to find ways of how to deny claims. That is what the typical.

Yeah. Now Mike now let's take a hypothetical case where we are working with you and you're working or you're fighting claims in the United States and the next of a particular deceased family decides to sort of retain your firm as a legal entity to represent them. How would the process work?

Well the first thing we would do we'd be a team and I would I think the easiest way to evaluate the aortionment of responsibilities among our team members would be I would be primarily in charge of establishing fault and liability through the court system based on the evidence that we can generate and folks like you would be involved in acquiring documentation of damages with respect to the family. So if for example represented a decedent who was wage earner for a family and had a wife and small children your role the investigator's role would be to local invest local lawyer's role would be to obtain all the records of employment of earnings. All photographs and you know birth certificates, things like that go to define who that passenger was, what the meaning of that passenger was to the family, not just from an economic standpoint, but from a an everyday standpoint. And I would in the meantime be litigating the case against whichever defendant that would be, call it Boeing, GE, whoever in the US courts, trying to establish their responsibility. What I do to do that is not just the accident investigation report because frankly that's not even admissible in court in the United States, no matter what AIB comes up with.

That's a that's sort of a guide for me in the litigation, but I can't just introduce that to evidence. They are not a court and they are not the jury. But what it does is they've got they've preserved evidence that I can then use in my case against Boeing. And we then subpoena records from Boeing as to its development of the fuel delivery system. If that turns out to be the issue here, just like we did in the MCAS system with respect to the 737 dates, we take testimony from the Boeing experts, the Boeing engineers.

We hire our own experts to evaluate all of this. We put together a case. It's not simply taking the AIB report and admitting that it into court and handed to the judge. That's not even admissible. But what it does, it gives me data that I can then have my experts interpret and then they can assist me in preparing for the testimony that I would get from the engineers and the Boeing folks.

The Boeing can contest the report of the investigators. I'm sorry. Can the Boeing people contest the report of the investigation agencies?

Oh, of course they will. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. First off, the investigative report, as I say, is not admissible evidence in a US court.

I don't know if it's admissible in India or not, but in the US court, it's not admissible, but it gives us a guide. So for example if it's show the report will show what the flap settings were show what the outside air temperature was will show that the rat was deployed will show possibly that a fuel delivery system malfunctioned on board the plane all these kind that's that's hard data so I can come to India and take testimony of the investigator in India to confirm what they found not their opinions about why it happened but just to confirm what they found and And then to take that information what those flap settings were, what the temperature was, what the you know fuel supply system umings were in the data report and they can feed that to our experts here in the United States, aviation experts have been doing it forever and then they can try to put together this puzzle of how this all happened. Boeing will of course contest that and that they have their right to disagree with the report but that's the nation process you know they take their position we take our position the beauty if there is a case that can be brought in the United States against Boeing or GE the beauty is that Boeing doesn't get to make the decisions don't get to make those decisions a judge and a jury gets to make those decisions okay the rule of law still applies and so all that evidence is then presented at a trial and a judge rules what's admissible and what's not and then the jury of regular people that are impaneled in the jury issue a verdict and they either find that there was a system or manufacturing defect of a component part on the Boeing or they don't and if they do then they issue an award of damages. Mike, one question about the jury. The selection of the jury, how competent is the jury to make a decision on a complex case like this?

Well, you'd be surprised how complicated cases get sometimes and juries are able to figure it out. The way it would first off, we have to figure out which jury we're talking about, right? So, if we were suing Boeing, I'll just use Boeing as an example because you know they're the airframe manufacturer. They're responsible for all the parts of the airplane, including its components. So, I'll just segregate GE out for a minute.

We just talk about Boeing. Boeing's headquarters is in Chicago, Illinois. They can be sued in the federal district court in Illinois. We just finished the lawsuit against Boeing on the 787s. The jury that would be impaneled if you went to trial on the case would be people within the jurisdiction of Chicago.

So they'd be residents of that Chicago. We would go through a jury selection process so that anybody that was completely unable to you know understand the basic facts of what we're talking about would be would be challenged for cause and discharged from being on the jury. But I should say that 97 98% of the cases never get to the jury. The vast majority of cases settle and they settle because of the risks that Boeing and the plaintiffs have with respect to you being in front of that jury. The stronger your case is against Boeing, the less Boeing wants to challenge that with or risk a jury coming up with an adverse ruling that's going to be very much more significant than they would like.

And I will say Boeing is a little skittish right now. I'm sure you're aware and others are aware of what's happened on the Max 8 case, the 737. The reputational damage has been significant. And a lot of things have been uncovered about Boeing's safety protocols or lack thereof in an effort to get the 737 Max 8 out into the marketplace quicker than it probably should have, which then led to those 346 people dying on two flights. So they're not they're not in a mood right now to want to be a defendant again in Northern District of Illinois on a case.

I don't know if there's a strong case or not a strong case here against Boeing for the 787 for this crash, but we did have a strong case against them in the 737 case. And got very good results for those folks well beyond and the recoveries that were obtained by the families well beyond anything imaginable in Indonesia where the first accident happened in Lion Air and Ethiopia where the second accident happened. So that's really the goal, I think, is to find out what happened to make sure the people that are held accountable for what happened and that the families are fairly compensated based on a fair and just evaluation by peers of theirs on a jury and not just based on, you know, convention, a treaty, you know, dictates from a judge. Mike, how do you envision the collaborative role of this entire international team that we would put into place from Portugal to the United Kingdom to India and the United States to function?

How would the administrative methodology be and how and how does the next of kin get involved with all this and how long do you think the entire process will take and just give a little brief on how this how the entire thing would work. Okay. Well, I think the first thing is to figure out what the flat recorder all of that says. So, a couple of months from now, we'll then be able to look at the evidence that's been generated by the investigators and get a clearer picture of who might be the most culpable party for causing this. If it's a systemic failure in the fuel delivery system on this Dreamliner aircraft that Air India had no way of knowing existed and it was not due to their maintenance or lack of maintenance or anything that they did all the maintenance and consistency with the with the protocols that Boeing dictates and GE dictates.

If that's where we're ourselves in two or three months, then that dictates our strategy, right? Then our strategy would be let's let's get a case on file in the United States against Boeing because we have a legitimate case against Boeing and in the United States and then try to negotiate a settlement with the Air Indian insurer so that we don't have a lawsuit against them because we want to keep the case in the United States. Okay. What we don't want to do is we don't want to have one case going in UK against Air India or in India in one case going against Boeing in the United States because the kick against Boeing get shipped back to India or the UK and that's that defeats the whole purpose of this. So, we I can't forecast exactly what the strategies will be because I don't need all that evidence.

But I do know that the goal is to maximize the recovery for the clients and to make sure that we can get as much transparency as possible over what actually happened here and not just rely on these accident investigators. They are a but they're not the finish. The accident investigators give us a window into this. We now need to open the window, go through the litigation process, do our own discovery, get our own experts to look at this evidence. And evaluate what happened.

So the families get a full understanding of why their loved one was taken their loved one was taken away from them. The role of the whole team would be to work co collaboratively together to not only assemble all of this evidence but to also interface with the next to make sure that they're well aware of what the process is and how things are proceeding. As a practical matter most cases most litigation lasts two to three years sometimes four years. The Ethiopian case that we just wrapped up in Lion Air case was filed in 2020. We resolved them in 2023 and 2024 and just the recent one in couple of months ago.

So it's it's not a quick process. But it's it's a thorough process and in addition to being able to fair it out exactly what happened and holding the people accountable for it or the companies accountable for it, we're we're able to make that reading time worth it because of the recoveries that you can obtain. But again it's all it all with your building blocks, you know, and the building blocks are the AIB report, the flight data recorder readings, the CR readings, the objective evidence that is out there. That's your building block. It's up to us and our team to build the house on that building block and to house as big and as strong as we possibly can.

We got to start with the building blocks. And right now it's too early where the house is going to be or how big it's going to be because I don't have the building block yet. And that's why I think it's it's it's very inappropriate for families to be making any decisions now. Is there a possibility of Boeing filing for bankruptcy?

No. Even if they did, it wouldn't change insurance situation. First off, they're a publicly traded company. And their stock is you know still selling for a fair amount. So they are very large company.

The fact is that part of the cost of doing business for Boeing, GE, Air India, any of these big entities are the insurance premiums, right? So in Air India's case, they're insured by I think a AIG because TA owns them. But that's their primary insurer. AIG then reinsures it through the syndicates and Lloyd's market. I've been led to it's like a billion and a half of coverage that Air India has.

Two and a half billions of coverage is typically what Boeing carries. They pay a lot in premiums for that. But it's spread among dozens of different syndicates in Lloyds. So it's not actually Boeing that's writing the full check. They they may pay some of it, but they're not paying a line share of it.

Beyond financial compensation, what are other significant remedies or outcomes can aviation accidents or the lawsuits on aviation accidents achieve in terms of making better processes, procedures or improving the manufacturing processes? What generally is an outcome out of these accidents for them? Yeah. Well, that's that's one of the most satisfying parts of my job, frankly, is when we're able to uncover a defect that we can prove in a court and force the designer or the manufacturer to change how they make that part, how they designed that part. We just did this in the 737 case.

They redesigned the MCAS system in the Boeing 737 because of our lawsuits. And so what happened in those two crashes back in 2018 and 2019 on the 737 will never happen again because the design was changed. I'd like to think that you know the existence of lawsuits and the discovery and disclosure of inadequate safety practices and system defects led to a decision by the companies to make a better product. I think the reality is that it's it's all money and it's cheaper for them to make a better product than it is for them to make that product get sued for it. But regardless of the rationale or the reason we get place we get to you still get to the place of them changing the design of the product and that's the most satisfying part of this because we can't do anything about the tragedy that just happened to these poor people on India flight.

We can try to comp get them compensation that is as fair as possible but we can't change what happened to them. What we can do in this lawsuit, you can make it less likely that it's going to happen to somebody else. And if there's a design defect in the fuel delivery system or there's some error in the maintenance manual that GE didn't properly highlight to the main and had they done that, they would have been able to rectify whatever fuel delivery problem there was. If we can fix that, then at least that's not going to happen again to cause another Dreamliner to crash. And finally, Mr. For the families in India and globally who are living through the immeasurable grief and uncertainty after the flight air India 171 crash.

What is your overarching message regarding the pursuit of justice and the comprehensive rightful compensation they deserve knowing that this multinational team is committed to supporting them in every step of my overriding message to them is to take your time to make any decisions. You know, right now we're we're the accident was June 12th. You we just started July. Time to come to grips with what's happened to them and what's happened to their family and loved one. I think it's best for us to stay back and let them have that time in a couple of months.

We'll get a lot more information because as I was saying earlier, this case involves all the being available to us. It's it's not an airplane that was lost over the sea like the Malaysian air crash that we had several years ago that I was involved in. You couldn't even find the airplane. So, it was really hard to discover that Egypt Air we, you know, lost over the Atlantic Ocean. Here we have the plane, we have the black boxes, we have we have all the wreckage that's available, we have all the records, we know what happened.

We have a video of what actually happened. Okay, so they it's not going to take that much more time to put all this together and have a pretty good idea of who might be the most party on that. So right now, I think the best thing for the families is to focus on what's most important to them right now. What's most important is to honor their loved ones and to get through the grieving process as best they can and then in a couple months to revisit this and then start trying to make a decision as to which what they want to do. I would strongly recommend they not do what the insurance company recommends they do because they will give them a release.

They should get counsel but they should be careful in who they select. You know for example we would never charge a fee. We charge a contingency fee which in the United States is calculated as a percentage against the amount that we cover from the families. It's not an hourly fee which I understand contingency fees aren't common in India. The best part of that is the families are not out of pocket to pay for a lawyer with the lawyers on the risk the families in and getting a recovery.

But I would charge a fee against any SDR Montreal absolute live money that would be paid because you don't need me for that. The the 15 million rupees assuming that there's that your damages equal that. And in most death cases they certainly do. That is something you're entitled to under the Montreal Convention whether you have a lawyer or you don't have a lawyer. I would never charge for something like that.

What I would charge for and I think the only ethical thing that any lawyer should be charging them for is for anything above that you are able to obtain because of the efforts of you being a lawyer and your team assembling all the evidence to establish the fault of a Boeing or a GE or to overcome the claim that by Air India under the that it was not negligent or that it was a sold negative of a third party whatever the litigation issue may our value is based on what we get beyond the automatic payments that they are to receive. So, one thing I would very much caution families against is not only don't sign releases, don't sign retainer agreements with lawyers just yet either. U because a lot of those lawyers don't make the distinction I just made and you don't need to pay a lawyer 20 or 30% of your $50 million rupees. You're going to get that anyway. With that Mike we come to the end of our podcast for today.

We conclude this crucial discussion on the Air India disaster and tragedy to the path to rightful compensation. My sincere thanks to you Mike for sharing your invaluable expertise and shedding light on the complexities of the aviation law. To all the next of kin listening, please understand that your journey to justice and comprehensive compensation is paramount. Do not feel pressurized into quick settlements. Remember, our team is on the ground in India, in the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Canada, and the United States.

The global team is ready to advise and stand by your side every step of the way. Ensuring you receive what you truly deserve, compensation far exceeding what the Montreal Convention alone mandates. We urge you, please share this podcast episode with other Next of Kins victims of the flight AI 171 whom you may know. By sharing this critical information, you can help ensure that every grieving family is empowered with the knowledge and support needed to pursue their full and rightful compensation. Your collective strength and informed decisions are vital.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening.