A US judge has awarded the parents of a British tourist killed in a helicopter crash in the Grand Canyon £78million.
Jonathan Udall, 31, died in 2018 alongside his wife and three others when the aircraft burst into flames.
The family from Southampton will receive £19.3 million from the operator of the helicopter, Papillon Airways, and £59.3 million from its French manufacturer, Airbus Helicopters SAS.
The family's lawyer, Gary Robb, said they insisted the settlement terms be made public to raise awareness about aircraft fuel tanks they say are prone to rupturing.
"The parents say the fuel tank was basically a fire bomb," he told the Associated Press.
Jonathan and Ellie Milward Udall, 29, boarded the helicopter from Boulder City, Nevada, with the three others who were killed. They were touring the Grand Canyon on the Hualapai reservation, outside the boundaries of the national park, when the crash happened.
The family's lawsuit alleged the helicopter was unsafe because it lacked a crash-resistant fuel system which is now required for aircraft built after the Federal Aviation Administration issued new regulations in 2020.
Mr Robb said some helicopter manufacturers have voluntarily replaced older fuel tanks but many have not.
"The Udall family wants to shine a spotlight on this issue so the industry will take note and voluntarily seek to correct this public health issue. They don't want anyone else to go through what their son went through in an otherwise survivable accident - not a broken bone. He would have walked away."
The Airbus EC130 B4 crashed just before sunset in February 2018 in a section of the Grand Canyon where air tours are not as highly regulated as in the national park.
Three of the British tourists on board were pronounced dead at the scene: veterinary receptionist Becky Dobson, 27, her boyfriend and car salesman Stuart Hill, 30, and Mr Hill's brother, 32-year-old lawyer Jason Hill.
Mr and Mrs Udall later died of complications from burn injuries. His parents claimed in the lawsuit that their son could have survived if not for the post-fire crash.
