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Families Deserve Fair Payout From $1.5 Billion Policy: Lawyer

LONDON -- The families of those aboard missing Flight 370 deserve a fair payout from the $1.5 billion insurance policy held by Malaysia Airlines for their "appalling treatment," a London lawyer representing some of them said Tuesday.

“We’ll be giving advice to the families on what is best for their individual circumstances,” said James Healy-Pratt, a partner at Stewart's Law LLP. He is representing families from a number of countries.

The most important thing was to get to the truth by conducting a thorough investigation, preventing future accidents and fair and equal treatment for each of the families, added the former helicopter pilot-turned legal eagle, who also worked with the families of passengers on the doomed Air France flight that vanished in 2009 over the Atlantic Ocean.

The airline must pay the families of those on board around $176,000 under a multilateral treaty known as the Montreal Convention, and said it had already given relatives $5,000 per passenger in compensation.

But relatives can also sue for further damages — and it is these further pay-outs that experts warn could vary widely.

"Compensation for loss of life is vastly different between U.S. passengers and non-U.S. passengers," Terry Rolfe, leader of the aviation practice at Integro Insurance Brokers, told CNBC.

"If the claim is brought in the U.S. courts, it's of significantly more value than if it's brought into any other court. And for U.S. citizens there is no problem getting into the U.S. courts."

Numerous nationalities

There were passengers of 14 different nationalities on board the flight, Malaysia Airlines said, with the majority — 152 — Chinese. There were also 38 passengers from Malaysia, seven Indonesians, six Australians and three Americans on board, among other nationalities.

Rolfe estimated that an American court could pay out $8 million to $10 million on a per-passenger basis, but compensation would be a fraction of this outside of the U.S. In China, she estimated relatives would receive less than $1 million per passenger.