Controversy is growing among aviation lawyers as it is reported that Ribbeck Law, the Illinois law firm that was the first to take legal steps, has sent six employees to Beijing and another six to Kuala Lumpur. The firm began taking legal steps twice but these were both rejected by a judge. 

Insurance

Other lawyers are suggesting that legal action should not be taken at the moment. ‘The next step is getting insurance payments, not lawsuits,’ says James Healy-Pratt of London-based Stewarts Law. Chinese lawyer, Zhang Qihuan, who has been talking to relatives of passengers on the missing plane, says that a court would be unlikely to award more than about US$140,000 per passengers - a sum which was paid over a Henan Airlines accident in 2010. But he said, according to the Malaysian Insider, that relatives could get a higher amount out of court ‘if they agreed to keep quiet’.