During flight 1282, on January 5, a group of Alaska Airlines passengers experienced depressurization after a door panel of a Boeing 737 Max 9 detached in mid-flight.
Almost two months after the tragic moment, Three passengers on the Alaska Airlines plane that had to make an emergency landing after a door stopper came off in mid-flight are suing the airline and the Boeing company for $1 billion. alleging that negligence caused the incident.
On February 20, a complaint was filed in Multnomah County, Oregon, on behalf of Kyle Rinker, Amanda Strickland, and Kevin Kwok, who were aboard Alaska Flight 1282 when an unused exit door detached from the plane minutes later. of a scheduled trip from Portland. to Ontario, California, in early January. Multnomah County includes Portland.
The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages, to be determined at trial, from Boeing, the corporate giant that made Alaska Airlines’ 737 Max 9 plane.
“As a direct result of the horrific, life-threatening Boeing aircraft failure, plaintiffs Kwok, Rinker and Strickland suffered serious mental, emotional and psychological injuries, including post-traumatic stress disorder and physical injuries. ” the lawsuit says, noting how the sudden change in pressure inside the cabin “caused some passengers’ ears to bleed.”
Jonathan W. Johnson, LLC, an Atlanta-based aviation law firm that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the passengers, said in a press release that it hoped to “hold Boeing accountable for its negligence that had caused extreme panic, fear and posttraumatic stress”. He called the explosion on Flight 1282 “a preventable incident” that not only threatened the lives of the passengers and crew aboard that specific plane, but also others manufactured by Boeing that subsequent investigations found had similar defects.
The lawsuit alleges that the Flight 1282 incident is “just one terrible chapter in the evolving history of Boeing and Alaska Airlines putting profits before safety.”
Although the plane landed safely in Portland, several passengers suffered minor injuries and lost phones and other personal belongings that were sucked into the hole in the plane.
Preliminary results of an investigation by the National Transportation and Safety Board into the incident found that four key bolts intended to hold the door plug in place were missing from the plane.
As a result of the incident, Alaska Airlines and United Airlines canceled flights on Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft while inspections were carried out.. Both airlines said they found loose hardware on grounded planes of that model.
The Federal Aviation Administration finally ordered a temporary global grounding of all Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft for an “immediate inspection” and is conducting an ongoing investigation of the plane to find out what went wrong on Flight 1282 and whether Boeing “has not was able to guarantee” that its aircraft “were capable of operating safely in accordance with FAA regulations.”
“This incident should never have happened and cannot happen again,” the agency said in a statement in January. “The FAA continues to support the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the January 5 door stopper incident.”
Keep reading:
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– Airlines suspend use of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 after incident on Alaska Airlines flight
– Boeing recommends suspending flights of the 777 model after the United Airlines plane incident in Denver