American Airlines ordered to pay Cali crash victim
     MIAMI - March 27, 1998 8:37 p.m. EST - A jury deciding the first
 lawsuit to go to trial in connection with a 1995 jet crash in Cali,
 Colombia, ordered American Airlines Friday to pay $565,000 to the
 family of one of the 159 people killed.
     The jury of eight people took less than two hours to decide the
 case, one of about 150 pending against the U.S. carrier owned by AMR
 Corp., a court official said.
     American last fall was declared guilty of "willful misconduct"
 in the crash and has since privately settled several other Cali law-
 suits for unknown amounts, lawyers and court officials said.
     The jury, which heard testimony from the father and sister of
 Maria Cortes, 27, awarded the family $200,000 for lost wages and
 services from the Colombian accountant and $365,000 for pain and
 suffering.
     Both the victim's father and sister described during a week-long
 trial how on Dec. 20, 1995, they had driven from Cali's airport
 where they had been awaiting Cortes's jet and climbed an Andean
 mountainside where American Airlines Flight 965 had gone down.
     Villagers told them the jet, a Boeing 757 en route to Cali from
 Miami, had crashed and burst into a ball of fire no one could have
 hoped to survive.
     Two flight crew, 151 passengers and six members of the cabin
 crew were killed, while another four were injured.
     Colombian investigators in November cleared Cali flight con-
 trollers of any fault in the crash, which they blamed on the Amer-
 ican flight crew.
     American itself has sued Honeywell Inc. and Jeppesen Sanderson
 Inc. for their roles in developing and manufacturing navigation
 equipment and computer software, which may have played a role in
 the crash.
     "I don't know why American didn't settle this one," said Edgar
 Miller, an attorney for the family. "They just keep losing."
     A Miami attorney for American, which dominates commercial avi-
 ation in Latin America, was not immediately available to comment.
 Attorneys said the airline could appeal the jury's award.
     A U.S. District Court judge in October found that American was
 guilty of "willful misconduct" in the crash because the American
 Airlines pilots kept descending into Colombia's treacherous moun-
 tains even after they knew they were lost.
     That ruling cleared the way for survivors and relatives of crash
 victims to sue the airline for far more than the $75,000 limit
 imposed by international law.
      A trial on another Cali victim's lawsuit was scheduled to begin
 in Miami on Monday, lawyers and court officials said.
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    Philippine Airlines settles claims of 32 Airbus crash victims
     BACOLOD, Philippines - March 27, 1998 07:37 AM EST - Philippine
 Airlines has settled 32 claims from victims of the crash of a PAL
 Airbus A320 jet that overshot a central Philippines runway, an
 airline official said Friday.
     Three people were killed on the ground and 133 passengers and
 people were injured when the plane plowed into a row of squatter
 houses.
     The relatives of 29 of the casualties on the ground and three
 passengers received unspecified amounts of money and signed a docu-
 ment to free the carrier from any other claims, PAL southern Philip-
 pines personnel manager Antonio Flores told reporters.
     He did not specify whether the claims included the families of
 the dead.
     Flores, one of three PAL lawyers negotiating with the victims'
 relatives, said the "amounts are acceptable and very, very fair,
 more than enough to answer for (their) losses."
     But he revealed that the settlement would cover the building of
 new houses at a government relocation site for the squatters who
 lost their homes.
     Flores said many of the passengers have so far refused to sign
 any waivers amid indications that they were contemplating lawsuits
 against the airline.
     "We will continue trying to convince them that what we are
 offering is fair," the official said.
     Investigators said the plane apparently misjudged its landing
 approach at the airport here during a domestic flight from Manila.
     PAL has sent the plane's two black boxes to France for analysis.
 A group of French government and Airbus Industrie investigators are
 cutting up the fuselage into four pieces so they could be trans-
 ported to a holding lot.
     The investigators should complete the removal of the aircraft on
 Sunday, PAL vice president for safety Robert Sternberg said.
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        European Airbus partners agree on possible merger
     PARIS - March 27, 1998 2:02 p.m. EST - The top civilian aircraft
 makers of France, Spain, Germany and Britain agreed in principle Fri-
 day on a merger that would create a single European aerospace and
 defense company. Such a merger of the companies that produce the
 civilian Airbus jetliners could create a European powerhouse that
 could compete with the rival U.S. aerospace giants Boeing and
 Lockheed Martin.
     The four companies now use Airbus as a marketing arm. They said
 they had presented a report on the merger plans to their respective
 governments, which have resisted ceding control over defense
 production.
     There was no timetable and the companies were vague about what
 concrete steps would be taken to pursue the merger. Progress on the
 merger plans also was likely to be slow given the varied corporate,
 legal, tax and export policies of the companies as well as differ-
 ences in their governments' defense priorities.
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