Posted on 04/28/2018 3:52:24 PM PDT by BBell
One of the passengers on the Southwest flight which made an emergency landing following engine failure has filed a lawsuit against the airline, as well as the makers of the plane and engine. When the engine exploded, pieces of it blew out a window on the plane, causing a woman to be killed when she was partially sucked out the window.
Lilia Chavez filed suit against Southwest Airlines, GE Aviation, Safran Aircraft Engines and CFM International, a supplier of jet engines, in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on Thursday. Chavez alleges in the lawsuit that the companies "unforgivably breached" the trust of passengers who "entrust their lives and safety, to entities such as Southwest and the CFM Defendants."
Jennifer Riordan, 43, was the first person to die on an American airline in almost 10 years in the April 17 incident. The plane, destined for Dallas, had taken off from LaGuardia International Airport in New York when the engine blew about 20 minutes into the flight. The pilot managed to safely land the plane in Philadelphia.
Chavez was sitting three rows behind where Riordan was partially sucked out the window, the lawsuit says.
"Ms. Chavez witnessed the horror as the force of the depressurization pulled an innocent passenger partially through the shattered window and she watched as passengers risked their lives to pull the passenger back into the aircraft and save her life," the lawsuit says.
According to Chavez, the cabin became "a whirlwind of airflow and airborne debris which struck Ms. Chavez and obstructed her breathing."
In the filing, Chavez says she "prayed and feared for her life" and she called her children to tell them she loved them and was preparing to die. Once the flight landed, Chavez alleges workers for Southwest did not appropriately care for her and fellow passengers.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Not sure how it works either but I do know that as far back as 9/11 passengers were able to call on their cell phones to folks on the ground. It’s why Flight 93 decided to take on their attackers - they called folks on the ground and heard about the attacks on the Pentagon, NYC.
The differential pressure resulted in over 1,000 lbf being axially applied to the woman.
But, it’s easier to say “sucked” or “pushed.”
People pay good money for rides like this at Coney Island.
How do they know the passenger was innocent?
According to the U.S. BLS, there are 124,800 commercial and airline pilots.
Let’s hope they don’t all suffer a catastrophic engine explosion during their careers. If they did, we’d be seeing an accident t like this about 20 times per day.
**Since you LOL’ed I figure you do know what a Great Circle route looks like on a Mercator Projection map, but there may be a few here on FR that don’t.**
Ha! I almost didn’t “lol”, just to see what variety of responses I could trigger.
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Total BS! She just got contacted by another Gloria Allred or Jim Adler type of shyster lawyers who wants to make $$ off of supposed damages.
Plus, she was strapped with her seatbelt and few grown women have shoulders or hips that can go through a plane’s window, which is only about 15” wide.
Lawyers that take on cases like this should lose their credentials to practice.
I guess if the Earth was flat, straight lines for flights would make sense.
I guess this woman would file a lawsuit if she saw a gory scene in a horror movie.
Exactly! And thanking God the pilots were able to land it safely. Sue happy is one reason why our society is what it has become nowadays.
**I guess if the Earth was flat, straight lines for flights would make sense.**
Well according to that map it must be purt near flat between Portland and Denver, with Cleveland to Cancun nearly as flat. But Philly to Miami...??..... they might as well stop in Bermuda and drop off the mail!
(L....O....L)
The general rule is fault, not strict liability like you advocate:
“The modern trend followed by a majority of states is to impose liability only upon a showing of negligence by *586 either the aircraft owner or operator.” ...”Moreover, a number of courts have expressly disavowed the notion that aviation is an “ultrahazardous activity” requiring special rules of liability.” “The Uniform Aeronautic Act, adopted in time by twenty-three states, imposed absolute liability on the owner, as well as the operator or lessee, of every aircraft for any damage to person or property caused by its operation provided there was no contributory negligence on the part of him who was thus harmed. With the passage of time, however, this view came to be modified, and the trend of decisions established it to be the general rule that, properly handled by a competent pilot exercising reasonable care, an airplane is not an inherently dangerous instrument, so that in the absence of statute the ordinary rules of negligence control, and the owner (or operator) of an *587 airship is only liable for injury inflicted upon another when such damage is caused by a defect in the plane or its negligent operation. “
Crosby v. Cox Aircraft 746 P.2d 1198, (1987)
I booked on Frontier once. The credit card company ended up refunding the ticket price agreeing that how the airline tried to treat me justified me re-booking on another airline. Never again.
Cell phones work fine in the air. It may cause some congestion from the number of towers that get hit, and the rules were originally put in place when airlines were trying to sell competing in-flight telephone service ($1/minute, I don’t recall if there was a setup fee). The argument that it might interfere with electronic flight controls was always pretty much male bovine feces. There’s no safety issue.
Now, the bigger question is whether passengers want everyone around them chatting and yelling into their cellphones on flights where you are trapped. So they leave the rule in place to avoid in-flight confrontations.
The report was making the point that non-contained engine explosions are a rarity.
Thank you for the information on cell phones. I never knew that.
Just for the heck of it I might try sending a text sometime from an airplane.
I understand that. They could have written “almost all pilots” instead of “most pilots.”
My point is that any one pilot has close to zero percent probability of experiencing this type of failure throughout his or her entire career. “Most” greatly exaggerates this probability of this event occurring. It is typical poor reporting.
Lilia Chavez should have watched a dozen “Air Disasters” episodes before setting foot in an airliner.But the other thing she should take into consideration is that, statistically, airline travel is far safer than any other method of traveling long distances. She is suing over the hole in the donut. Statistics are of course cold comfort when your number is up, or momentarily even seems to be. But you don’t know that your car wouldn’t have been T-boned if you had driven your car instead of flying.
But the twin realities are that
- the people who design, build, maintain, and operate airliners are human beings, and human beings do make mistakes. And,
- there is a system in place to constantly improve the design of air transport equipment and air transport procedures.
When air travel began, it was a serious risk to use it. A century later, it is the least risky option. A little gratitude is in order.
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