“But more will try to hit the lawsuit lottery jackpot.”
Life is a risk from the day you are born. Flying on Southwest is safe, very safe. Driving from New York to Dallas is multiple times more dangerous than flying Southwest. The passenger’s family must certainly be compensated. Those that were not injured are simply parasites. I worked in the oilfields in offshore exploration for 17 years before becoming a pharmacist. I saw tragic accidents, one poor bastard burned alive. I did not sue my company for psychological trauma. I just did my job.
The company that is in real jeopardy is the one that designed and built the turbine. Turbines fail catastrophically on extremely rare occasions. The containment ring for this did not contain the failure. I suspect an engineering design failure. It must be mentioned that this turbine has a stellar record of safe performance.
It will probably take a year, but the NTSB will determine exactly the reason for this turbine failure and why the containment ring did not contain the disintegration of the turbine.
As a long-time airline employee, from what I seen in the media, there is no way that they are not liable for what happened. That said, they are also being very proactive in contacting people and writing checks in advance.
They learned well from the Midway accident.
And culturally, this quite a shock for the Southwest people. They have prided themselves on never having a passenger casualty in thier history, and they have a hell of a safety culture, despite the obvious failing in this incident.