It didn't return her calls. The NTSB found that airlines mishandled personal belongings and misidentified human remains. And they used information from counseling in litigation. The climate for the relatives began to change with the formation of the National Air Disaster Alliance in 1995. The Washington, D.C., group combined support groups that grew out of several individual airplane accidents.
Legal observers believe the burgeoning movement has had a profound effect.
After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, victims' families successfully lobbied Congress to pass a law barring judges from excluding them from courtrooms. John H. Stein, deputy director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance, in Washington, D.C., said families of airline crash victims picked up on the movement after a sabotaged PanAm jet crashed at Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. And relatives' response to the TWA Flight 800 disaster near Long Island in 1996 further solidified the movement's adoption. After the TWA crash, Congress passed the laws requiring airlines to care for the families. After a Korean Air Lines crash in Guam in 1997, the Congress extended the provisions to foreign carriers operating in the United States.