Chinese passenger insured for $1.4m

By Xin Dingding (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-04 07:35

Beneficiaries of one of the Chinese passengers onboard Air France Flight 447 may get 9.6 million yuan ($1.4 million) in insurance, the largest amount ever paid to an individual in China.

While declining to reveal the person's name, PICC Life Insurance Co Ltd said yesterday in a news release that the client bought an insurance product last year with the insured amount set at 240,000 yuan. According to the insurance contract, the passenger would get 40 times the insured amount if the person was killed in an air crash.

Chinese passenger insured for $1.4m
Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim sits in front of a diagram of the crash area of Air France flight AF447 during a news conference in Rio de Janeiro June 2, 2009. [Agencies]

"An emergency team has been set up to make preparation for the payment," a company spokesman said yesterday.

Also yesterday, a young Chinese scientist was confirmed as being on the Air France plane that crashed into the sea, the last of nine Chinese to be identified.

Xiao Xiang, a research associate with the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was invited by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro to go to Brazil to carry out research.

After a two-week stay, the 35-year-old planned to return to Beijing via Paris, a spokesman for the institute said yesterday.

"It is a loss to us and his family," the spokesman said.

Xiao, a native of Jiangxi province, was a graduate of Tsinghua University who had studied and worked at the academy since 1997 and published more than 20 papers.

He was married with a three-year-old child and lived in Beijing, as do his parents.

Representatives from the academy have taken turns to be with Xiao's family.

Air France's office in China is continuing to contact families of the nine Chinese passengers who were on the plane, and will help those wanting to go to Brazil or France, said Zhou Yinghui, Air France's public relations manager in China.

The other eight Chinese passengers on the missing plane include a Chinese applicant for the status of investment immigrant in Brazil from eastern China, six staff members from Benxi Iron & Steel (Group) Co Ltd in Liaoning province and an employee of the Huawei Technologies Co Ltd based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

The nine Chinese were among the 228 people aboard the plane.

The passengers included one infant, seven children, 82 women and 126 men, according to Air France.