As details emerge about the incident that blew a hole in an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 midflight last week, the region’s aviation legal experts are raising questions about quick, $1,500 cash payments the airline provided passengers aboard the near-catastrophic plane trip.
Twenty minutes after Flight 1282 took off from Portland last week, a piece of fuselage broke loose, opening a significant hole in the side of the aircraft and tearing the shirt off one teenager sitting nearby. Several passengers were treated for nonlife-threatening injuries after the plane landed safely back in Portland, though investigators are still working to determine what exactly happened.
“The one thing you know is that this is somebody’s fault,” said Charles Herrmann, an aviation attorney who’s represented dozens of families of victims in past airplane crashes, including the crashes in 2018 and 2019 of two Boeing 737 MAX 8 airliners.
Since the incident, investigators determined the panel that blew off was a door plug used to seal a fuselage cutout for an optional emergency exit door that is used only by a few airlines with high-density seating.
“It’s overwhelmingly obvious that that plug should not have come out,” Herrmann said. “The cause of that plug coming out is either outright negligence, or somebody didn’t do what they were supposed to do, didn’t tighten those bolts down, or didn’t inspect (the plane) properly.”
On Thursday, six passengers filed a potential class-action lawsuit against Boeing, claiming the manufacturer owes them and the other 165 passengers aboard Flight 1282 compensation for injuries and other harms caused by the incident. Alaska Airlines is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
Alaska refunded passengers on Flight 1282 and, within 24 hours, provided each with a $1,500 cash payment “as an immediate gesture of care,” according to a Thursday statement from the SeaTac-headquartered airline. The payment was intended to “cover any incidental expenses to ensure their immediate needs were taken care of.”
Alaska is also offering passengers 24/7 access to mental health resources and counseling sessions from Empathia, a behavioral health and emergency management company and airline partner.
“We are in communication with our guests of Flight 1282, and will continue to work with them to address their specific needs and concerns,” the Alaska statement said.
‘$1,500 is just not enough’
Quick cash payments for passengers are common in these types of incidents, particularly ones where no one died, said Robert Hedrick, an attorney with Aviation Law Group in Seattle. There can sometimes be value in the offer, he said.
“That early payment can soften hard feelings passengers may have,” Hedrick said. But in this case, the $1,500 offer is a “drop in the bucket,” he added.
“Would I exchange what they went through for $1,500? There’s no way,” Hedrick said. “When you get in that area of sort of offensively low offers of money, it’s insulting.”
Vi Nguyen, 27, who was on the flight, said in an interview the payment did not reflect the terror of the experience.
“It was very traumatic,” Nguyen said. “I don’t want to sound greedy, but I feel like $1,500 is just not enough.”
An Alaska spokesperson confirmed Thursday evening that the payments were automatically transferred to all Flight 1282 passengers. No stipulations or agreements were involved.
In their lawsuit filed Thursday by attorneys Daniel Laurence and Furhad Sultani of Stritmatter Kessler Koehler Moore law firm, six Flight 1282 passengers and one family member of a passenger describe various injuries, physical and emotional, that include a concussion, soft tissue injuries, internal bleeding in one person’s ear and difficulty breathing. One passenger who suffers from a seizure disorder triggered by stressful situations said he experienced a seizure after he disembarked.
Plaintiffs in the case, which was filed in King County Superior Court in Seattle, are asking for compensation related to treatment for health conditions and psychological injuries, as well as costs from the cancellation of travel plans and missed work and the value of lost personal items.
The complaint also alleges many of the emergency oxygen masks that dropped down midflight did not work.
More possible legal claims
Other legal claims could be on their way, though several Seattle-area aviation attorneys this week said passengers should not necessarily feel rushed to file.
“We’ve seen emotional distress and PTSD come out many days, weeks or even months after accidents, when symptoms may develop,” Hedrick said. “I think passengers should first take care of themselves. There’s no rush to make a claim.”
Flight 1282 passengers will likely have valid negligence claims against the airline or the manufacturer, depending on results of a National Transportation Safety Board investigation, said Herrmann, who generally represents passengers in these types of cases.
“When you look at Alaska Airlines … you have the affirmative duty to ensure the safety of your passengers to the utmost of your ability,” Hermann said.
There could also be product liability claims, which would cite a violation of the Washington Product Liability Act, which the Thursday complaint pointed to, or similar laws.
“You’re responsible for this, whether you were negligent in manufacturing or not, if the product turned out to be defective,” Herrmann said.
The complaint also alleges deviation, or a change from the original plan, and issues with consumer expectation.
Hedrick said he sees several possible legal cases, mainly open to those who were on Flight 1282, but also potentially for travelers whose flights were canceled or delayed due to the FAA’s grounding of all MAX 9s — though he encouraged those passengers to try and work it out with the airlines first. Outside of passenger claims, he also noted potential airline claims against Boeing or Spirit AeroSystems, the Boeing supplier that builds MAX 9 fuselages.
“They have a serious loss of revenue by grounding their whole fleet of MAX 9 planes,” Hedrick said. “Then the cost of repairs, and they may seek reimbursement for having to reroute their passengers. But that usually won’t happen in litigation.”
Hedrick has spoken with some Flight 1282 passengers already, but noted they “might not file anything right away.”
“I usually advise passengers to take care of themselves and their families and get stable,” he said.
In general, each claim depends on the individual experience of the passenger.
Several factors dictate what type of claim a passenger wants to file, including their ticket and whether their overall trip was domestic or international; the seat they were in and how close it was to the hole in the plane; and if they had other physical or mental conditions before getting on the flight that could have been exacerbated by the experience, said Seattle aviation attorney and longtime pilot Jimmy Anderson.
“Two people sitting next to each other could have vastly different recoveries,” he said. “If someone had ear surgery in the past, for example, they might have a completely different decompression experience than someone sitting next to them.”
He said he is looking forward to learning more from investigations of the incident.
“Early on in aviation, there were a lot of accidents that were considered acts of God,” Anderson said. “It was difficult to determine what caused the plane crash, and also difficult to determine whether the failure that happened was foreseeable.”
Now, he added, aviation accidents are “almost universally preventable.”
“That’s because most of the problems incurred by aircraft manufacturing and design are foreseeable,” he said. “The question is about what happened and what could’ve been done to prevent it.”
Nate Bingham, who works with Anderson and has represented victims of aviation accidents in the past, reiterated that it’s still a bit early to say what exactly went wrong on Jan. 5. Many passengers might not yet even realize the extent of their injuries, he said.
“Usually people feel the need to rush to the courthouse,” Anderson said. “The reality is that it rarely benefits people to be in a rush, but rather thinking through things is usually the better way.”
(Seattle Times business reporter Lauren Rosenblatt and Seattle Times contributor Deborah Bloom contributed to this story, which includes information from The Seattle Times archives.)