PESHAWAR, May 9: The Peshawar High Court on Wednesday gave the Airblue airline more time to pay compensation to families of all 152 persons, including crewmembers, who died in the July 2010 crash of its plane in Islamabad.

Now, the airline is to ensure payment of compensation to the legal heirs of the crash victims until May 30, the date fixed for next hearing.

Airblue had requested a PHC bench comprising Chief Justice Dost Mohammad Khan and Justice Miftauddin Khan to suspend a Civil Aviation Authority order to it for payment of compensation to the relevant families until May 15 to avoid suspension of operations.

During the hearing into a petition on April 25 of former MNA Marvi Memon about the Airblue crash, the bench had directed the airline’s management to pay compensation to families of all 152 victims within 20 days. It had also said in case compensation was not paid within the stipulated time and no convincing reason was cited for it, then the airline’s flying and other operations should be suspended by the federal government and CAA until the payment was made.

Wasim Sajjad and Abdul Lateef Yousafzai, lawyers for Airblue, said their client had been complying with the court order and had so far paid the Rs5.5 million compensation each to over 100 families.

Mr Sajjad said several technical issues were to blame for delay in payment of compensation to some families and they included filing of lawsuits in different courts, including those of the US. He further said several families had not been issued succession certificates due to which it was not clear to whom payment should be made.

The chief justice observed that in the previous order, the court had clearly mentioned that families of all crash victims should be made conditional payment through cross cheques and indemnity bonds should be obtained from them so that if anyone else filed a claim with Airblue, the said money could be recovered from them.

Mr Sajjad said in light of the court’s earlier directions, CAA had issued an order to Airblue directing it to pay compensation until May 15 failing which its operation would be suspended.

The bench suspended the said order until May 30 directing Airblue to pay compensation by then in line with the modalities fixed by the court.

Mr Sajjad said he had personally been taking interest in payment of compensation to the families at the earliest. He added that he had played active role in the enactment of the Carriage by Air Act, 2012, in which compensation to legal heirs of the air crash victims was increased to Rs5 million from Rs395,000. He suggested that the amount of compensation be increased every three years forcing airlines to act more responsibly.