A regional court in Braunschweig has rejected a compensation claim by 30 relatives of victims of the Germanwings disaster, ruling that they cannot seek additional pain and suffering damages from the German state. The case concerns the 2015 crash of a Germanwings Airbus A320 flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf, which was deliberately flown into the French Alps by the copilot and killed 150 people.
The plaintiffs had sought between about 500 and 110,000 euros each, arguing that Germany’s Federal Aviation Office failed to properly monitor the copilot’s fitness to fly. The court found the state was not the correct defendant because comparable claims could be pursued against Germanwings or Lufthansa under international air-law rules, including the Montreal Convention.
The hearing took place in Braunschweig, where the Federal Aviation Office is based. The ruling is another setback for the families after earlier claims against Lufthansa failed in Frankfurt, Essen and Hamm. It leaves the legal focus on the airline side rather than on public authorities in one of Germany’s deadliest aviation disasters.