Liability after a plane crash
 

To what extent can the affected parties of a plane crash come after the airline company?

see conditions of carriage on the back of the AWB

Oh, wait, now we're all e-freight, umm, errr..

While I cannot speak for other countries, in Japan after an accident the police are one of the first to arrive on the scene and arrest the flight crew. It is sort of like guilty under proven innocent. Our company warned us to not speak to any authority until they arrived and given the Japanese culture of honesty, doesn't fit into their culture and they assume you must be hiding something. When Garuda went down in Fukuoka they arrested the crew and were not allowed to go home for some time. They finally released them with the proviso they return for the final inquest. Fortunatly for us there wre no accidents so we did not have to run the gauntlet. After all that I would still love to return to Japan. But alas, age won out.