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Woman Gets $2,000 In Crash Settlement

A Moscow court approved a $2,000 settlement Tuesday between an insurance company and the only crew member to survive a 2011 plane crash in Karelia.

The Tverskoi District Court signed off on the settlement between flight attendant Yulia Skvortsova and AlfaStrakhovanie.

The case resulted from the June crash of a Tu-134 passenger plane owned by RusAir near Petrozavodsk that killed 47 of the 52 people on board.

Skvortsova had sued the insurance company for more than 300,000 rubles ($10,350).

As part of the same lawsuit, Skvortsova still has a claim pending against the airline, which has since been renamed AtlasJet.

In that claim, she is seeking compensatory damages totaling 10.5 million rubles ($362,000).

The crash prompted President Dmitry Medvedev to partially suspend Tu-134 flights in late June.

Similar bans have been considered for other Soviet-built planes, including the An-24, after subsequent accidents last summer.

But in September, the Interstate Aviation Committee blamed the crash partly on the pilot, who was drunk and ordered a less-experienced pilot to violate landing rules in heavy fog.

In August, the Interregional Transportation Prosecutor's Office in Moscow found multiple violations by the airline.

The investigation determined that RusAir was not giving pilots enough rest before flights and that it had assigned pilots with insufficient experience to routes that required landings in mountainous terrain.

Prosecutors ordered the head of the company to eliminate the violations.

Skvortsova's claims against the airline include a medical bill of more than 7 million rubles ($239,300), which she still hasn't paid, her lawyer, Gennady Sushko, told journalists outside the court.

In the crash, Skvortsova's collarbone was fractured, and she suffered first- and second-degree burns on both legs, Sushko said.

The next hearing has been set for April 19. The judge suggested that the parties propose questions and organizations for an expert review of the case.

That would determine whether Skvortsova could have her injuries treated as part of free state health care.

Skvortsova was not at Tuesday's hearing because she didn't want media attention, Sushko told reporters.

She would not talk to reporters by telephone, either, Sushko told The Moscow Times.

Representatives of the airline and the insurance company refused to talk to reporters at court Tuesday.

RusAir laid off Skvortsova in early February, four months after she filed her lawsuit, as part of staff cuts, Sushko said.

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