Here's an article about a case our law firm is handling as printed in the Beijing Youth Daily:

Family Members of Baotou Aircrash Victims Have Claimed Over US$40 Million in Compensation

Yesterday, the standard for compensation to the 30 Baotou Aircrash victims was preliminarily determined.  The plaintiff's American attorney made an initial estimate of compensation in an amount of US$42,026,930.00 based on the American calculation method of compensation for air crash victims.

Thus far, the final trial court has not been decided yet, as revealed by Hao Junbo, Chinese attorney for the plaintiff, and they will not rule out the possibility of settling the case through mediation, as approximately 80% of such cases have ended in this way. The said compensation will also serve as the basis of mediation between the parties concerned.

Further, the distribution method for compensation remains undecided. Compared to the applicable PRC standards under which the amount of compensation is based on the per capita disposable income of urban residents or the per capita pure income of rural residents of the previous year in the area of court filing, multiplied by 20 years, US courts will take the actual family income of each victim into account. Due to the complexities of this case, a compromise between the two different standards would also be likely according to Hao Junbo.

It is anticipated that, if the mediation fails, the preliminary hearings with respect to jurisdiction for this case will be conducted this summer in Los Angeles, USA. "

In this article, $40 million is mentioned as the American average for compensation to the families of aircraft disasters.  This seems like a lot of money to me, perhaps too much.  But I have found that 20 million dollars is a justifiable price with McDonald's coffee, perhaps twice that much is fair in a plane crash.  This week I will interview Hao Junbo and ask him how the number of $40 million is justified in this case. 

Furthermore, the article says that American standards for compensation and Chinese standards vary.  To me, this implies that the expected compensation from the airline is less than 40 million, but, even as a benchmark, this amount of money means a big case for LLX.