Gulf Air is likely to be forced by a French court to pay as much as $80 million to the families of 74 victims of the Gulf Air August 2000 crash, which killed 143 passengers and the crew, lawyers representing the families said yesterday.

"We are having a tough fight against Gulf Air in the Toulouse Court, but we are approaching the end," Jean Pierre Bellecave of the French law firm Martin-Chico and Associations, which is representing the Bahraini victims' families, told reporters yesterday at a press conference.

Lawyer of the Egyptian families, Yasser Fathi, the representative of the committee of the Bahraini families Isa Ajlan and the committee's lawyer Ali Al Uraibi were also present.

The Airbus A320-212 aircraft crashed at sea about three miles north-east of Bahrain International Airport, on August 23, 2000 resulting in the deaths of two pilots, six cabin crew and 135 passengers.

In July, the Toulouse court issued a ruling upholding the jurisdiction of the French court to hear the case against Gulf Air and the manufacturer of the aircraft, Airbus Industries, in France.

In its ruling, the court said it will determine the party responsible for the accident and issue a verdict in the case related to the compensation for the family members of the crash victims of different nationalities including 33 Bahrainis.

The victims' families first filed a case in February 2001 claiming that the compensation offered by the carrier, $130,000 for each family, was not sufficient.

Bellecave accused the carrier "tried hard to drag" the case in order to get the families "discouraged" to abandon the case. "But this was rejected by the court during a November 3 hearing in which we managed to get a timetable."

The number of families is increasingly losing patience with the attitude of the airline, he said.

Gulf Air has publicly accepted the obligation to pay damages and offered to pay a compensation of $130,000. "So why don't they pay this amount and let the court proceed to pass a decision on the rest of the amount claimed by the families."

Bahrain's Directorate of Civil Aviation had published a report on the outcome of the investigations into the accident on July 16, stating a pilot error was behind the crash.

The report also said that other factors which may have caused the crash included inadequacies in the airline's flight crew training programmes and problem in the plane's flight data analysis system, which were not functioning satisfactorily.

On February 3, 2003, Bellecave said, Gulf Air will have to present its argument relating the main question, "its responsibility" in the tragic crash.

On March 3, "there will be a meeting with the judge to set a date for the final hearing in which both sides will present their oral arguments." The hearing is expected to take place in April.

The final decision, in which the court will specify the compensation, was likely to be issued by the court in May 2003, Fathi said.

"We are looking at individual compensations that range between a minimum of $50,000 and maximum of $10 million," he told Gulf News. The total amount Gulf Air may be forced to pay would be around $80 to $110 million, he estimated.

Fathi also accused the carrier of trying to delay the case by throwing legal arguments on its lawyers, and the lawyers of the airline insurers, knowing it was baseless.

A spokesman for the airline said Gulf Air "has done everything in its power" to support the families of the victims. "We have set up an office for that for a year and half ago after the tragic accident and took care of the welfare of the victims' kin," he told Gulf News on the condition of anonymity.

The spokesman, however, refused to comment on the lawyers' statements, saying the case is before the court.

He was commenting on a statement by the lawyers of the families' committee, Al Uraibi, in which he claimed Gulf Air "has done absolutely nothing" to comfort nor support the families of the victims. "On the contrary, they have considered us as their enemies."

He said the committee was considering the possibility of launching a criminal suit. "The case will be launched to force the airline to hold those responsible for the crash accountable and avoid another tragedy."