By Lee Hyo-sik
A flurry of questions surround the crash of the Asiana Airlines’ cargo plane off Jeju Island last Thursday not only concerning the exact cause of the accident but more suspiciously about the multiple insurance policies one of the two missing pilots obtained not long before the flight.
The pilot’s purchase of the insurance policies sparks speculation of a possible insurance scam. Accusations Asiana and the bereaved family flatly deny.
Company officials and family members say it makes no sense for the pilot who earned 200 million won ($190,000) a year to engage in an insurance scam by staking his life and destroying the airplane full of high-value cargo.
The 52-year-old captain Choi Sang-ki, his body not yet recovered, had purchased seven life and non-life insurance policies between June 28 and July 18. If Choi is declared dead due to an accident, his insurance beneficiaries will collect up to nearly 3 billion won.
Insurers reported the findings to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) a day after the crash and are now looking into how the pilot purchased the policies and how much premium he was paying though they are not in a hurry.
“Until we know exactly why the Asiana Airlines cargo plane crashed, it is not appropriate to question the pilot’s motive for purchasing insurance policies. We will send an official notice to the pertinent insurance firms, asking them to refrain from raising groundless allegations,” FSS official Kim Soo-bong said in a media briefing Monday.
But Kim said the FSS will consider looking into the case after the results of the investigation into the plane crash are finalized.
Meanwhile Asiana Airlines and Choi’s family strongly deny the allegations that the missing pilot crashed the plane on purpose for insurance money.
“It is unthinkable for a well-paid veteran pilot like Choi to intentionally cause a plane crash for insurance payments. It just doesn’t make any sense. What we need to do now is to figure out why the plane crashed,” an Asiana official said.
Choi began working for the country’s second largest flagship carrier in 1991. Over the past 20 years, he accumulated over 10,000 hours of flight time and earned about 200 million won a year.
The company official said Choi’s bereaved family is furious, demanding insurers and others stop spreading discriminating rumors.
Asiana’s B747 cargo plane, which departed from Incheon International Airport at 3:05 a.m. for Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport, disappeared from the radar at 4:12 a.m. while trying to return to Jeju nine minutes after reporting a fire.
Debris was found in waters 130 kilometers west of Jeju about two and a half hours later. Searches for the black box and the two missing pilots by the Coast Guard have been coming up empty.