Video | Chinese survivors of Asiana crash file claim against Boeing

Claim comes six months after Asiana Airlines Flight 214 slammed into a seawall at the end of a runway when landing at San Francisco International Airport in July last year

Ye Mengyuan (inset), 16, was allegedly hit by emergency vehicles responding to the air crash. Photos: AP

Published: 5:00pm, 29 Jan 2014Updated: 2:40pm, 30 Jan 2014

Some 80 Chinese survivors of the Asiana plane crash in San Francisco have filed a class-action suit with more than 50 others against Boeing, the maker of the 777 aircraft they were travelling in. Each is suing Boeing for about US$50,000 in compensation, the Beijing-based China Youth Daily reported on Wednesday.

The legal action comes six months after Asiana Airlines Flight 214 hit a seawall at the end of a runway during final approach for landing at San Francisco International Airport on July 6, leaving three dead and hundreds injured.

The three deceased were Chinese students attending summer camps in US. All told, 304 of the 307 people on board survived the disaster.

Monica Kelly, a Chicago-based lawyer who filed the claim in an Illinois court, told the Daily that the aircraft in question had "flaws in design", and Boeing had failed to provide the Asiana pilots with "sufficient training".

The parents of one victim Ye Mengyuan, a teenage girl from China who was allegedly run over and killed by two emergency vehicles belonging to the San Francisco Fire Department, earlier filed a claim against the city of San Francisco.

Attorneys for the parents said in legal forms that firefighters who first saw the girl after the crash should have examined her and moved her somewhere safe, according to a report by the Associated Press.