Singapore Airlines last night announced it would offer £290,000 compensation each to the families of the 81 passengers and crew who died when one of its jumbo jets crashed in Taiwan.
The airline accepted that its experienced Malaysian pilot, Chee Kong Foong, 41, made a 'dreadful error' by trying to take off from the wrong runway at Taipei airport on Tuesday.
Two Britons, Florida-based teacher Margaret Blanche Rabley, 62, originally from Risca, near Newport, South Wales, and Hong Kong-based Tak Wing Loo, 27, are presumed dead, the airline said.
Two other Britons, Paul Blanchon, 38, from Stokesley, North Yorkshire, and US-based Steve Courteney, 45, were among the 98 survivors.
The airline, which had earlier offered £18,000 to the families of those who died and £3,400 to the injured, said it would also pay the medical expenses of the injured and discuss further compensation with them later.
Its Los Angeles-bound Flight SQ006 broke into three pieces and burst into flames after straying on to a runway which was being repaired and slamming into cranes.
The airline's deputy chairman, Cheong Choong Kong, said it accepted full responsibility for the disaster, which was due to 'pilot error'.
He said: 'They are our pilots, it was our aircraft, and the aircraft should not have been on that runway. There is no point in concealing anything and we won't.'
But he added: 'The pilots all along believed they were on the correct runway, but they now know that they weren't.'
He said he believed the pilots, who have been told not to leave Taiwan, were well rested before the flight.
Captain Foong, who survived, had been with the airline 21 years, has 11,000 hours' flight experience and knew the airport well.
Questions are now being raised about safety at the airport which did not have ground radar to monitor the whereabouts of planes on the ground.
There are also suggestions that lights were left operating on the runway that was under repair, and there was no barrier to prevent planes going on to it.
