Memorial held for victims of Asiana crash at SFO

COLMA, Calif. (KGO) -- San Francisco's mayor and the Chinese Consul General were among those who attended a memorial service Wednesday for the victims of Asiana Flight 214.

Wang Lin Jia and Ye Meng Yuan, both 16-years-old, and 15-year-old Liu YiPeng were remembered at the service in Colma.

The service, held at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, was closed to the news media. But from a distance we could see the Chinese Consul General arrive, followed by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee.

We are told that the parents of the three young women who were killed in the accident spoke about their daughters.

Ye Meng Yuan was killed on the runway by a fire truck. Wang Lin Jia was ejected from the plane and also died at the scene. The third victim, Liu YiPeng, died six days later. All three attended the same middle school in an affluent coastal province in eastern China.

As the ceremony was underway, a regularly scheduled Asiana flight flew over the cemetery.

Afterwards, Mayor Lee was too choked up to speak with reporters.

The Chinese Consul General said he too was moved to tears by the ceremony and he added that the parents of the victims would be flying home this Saturday.

We were told that the head of Asiana Airlines would also be at the memorial. Video shows a man who looks like Asiana President Yoon Young-doo. And reporters for Chinese television identified him as Yoon, but the man got into a car and left with several others before the two hour service began

In Redwood City, attorney and pilot Mike Danko is working with law firms representing a half a dozen crash victims. He says right now Asiana is trying to get cases settled before lawsuits are filed.

"I haven't heard in this case any firsthand information that Asiana is pressuring passengers to sign away their rights," Danko said. "But I'll tell you in every major aviation disaster I've worked in that's right out of the airlines playbook."

He says airlines are most concerned with cases where passengers file a lawsuit in the United States, where claims can run into the millions of dollars.

"And if you bring the same suit in China, the compensation is going to be in the tens of thousands of dollars," Danko said. "So it's really not even going to be worth bringing that suit in China."

Not everyone is eligible to file a suit in the United States. You must be a U.S. resident, or purchased the ticket in the U.S., or intended the U.S. to be the final destination of the trip.

So, a great deal of discrepancy between filing here and filing a lawsuit in China.

We contacted Asiana Airlines for the story but they did not return our calls.

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colma, Asiana Airlines crash, plane crash, crash, san francisco international airport, sffd, china, ed lee, lawsuit, airline industry, peninsula news, mark matthews

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