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Passengers sue Boeing, Alaska Airlines for $1 billion over midair door panel blowout

The “preventable incident” endangered scores of lives both on the plane itself and others flying Max 9 aircraft, the suit alleges.

Three passengers are suing Boeing and Alaska Airlines for $1 billion in damages in the wake of a door panel blowing out midair on their flight.

The suit, announced Feb. 23, accuses Boeing and Alaska Airlines of negligence for allegedly having ignored warning signs that could have prevented the Jan. 5 incident, which forced the plane pilots to make an emergency landing.

“This experience jeopardized the lives of the 174 passengers and six crew members that were on board,” a release announcing the suit states. “For those reasons, the lawsuit seeks substantial punitive damages … for what was a preventable incident.”

turkishdelight ,

There are only two commercial airplane producers at scale. If there was any competition in this market Boeing would have bankrupt by now.

milicent_bystandr ,

Aeroplanes aren’t like loaves of bread where you can just buy another one tomorrow if you don’t like this one today.

You have to plan, order, buy, support and maintain, and one presumes a lot of money is lost if you change half way. Besides the efficiency of buying from the same company (and better still, the same model) you already have planes from.

So there’s a lot of inertia for competition to pull a customer from.

turkishdelight ,

You lose a lot more money when your MAX crashes or when it’s grounded for two years.

milicent_bystandr ,

I’d hope so… do you think it’s really true?

turkishdelight ,

en.m.wikipedia.org/…/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings

milicent_bystandr ,

The groundings are true - but does it really cost companies more than changing suppliers?

turkishdelight ,

Imagine paying for a car, and then not being allowed to drive it for two years.

milicent_bystandr ,

Imagine you have a whole department dedicated to managing your fleet of cars and getting them serviced at the same dealer, then you switch brand loyalty so you buy a new fleet and contract a new garage.

turkishdelight ,

it’s bad. but not as bad as the plan sitting in the airport for two years.

harderian729 ,

Feels like the airline industry is really feeling the crush of capitalism.

It’s just not something that can be operated like a fast food restaurant, but it’s clear this is what the ruling class wants.

Cuttlefish1111 ,

Feels like the ruling class has lost control of the ship

RizzRustbolt ,

It was always the creepy crab monster in the hold that ran the ship.

whotookkarl ,
@whotookkarl@lemmy.world avatar

The wealth class doesn’t care because they have their own personal planes they use instead of the plebian flying busses.

ycharts.com/companies/BA/stock_buyback paints a grim picture where all of the time and money that should have been going to safety and quality standards were going to stock price inflation from buybacks. 1 billion is not enough, it should be 10+ billion all invested into hiring and training FAA investigators and QC to meet those standards, and an anti trust suit to break up Boeing.

CosmicCleric ,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

The FAA used to protect against Capitalism’s race to the bottom.

Not sure what’s changed recently with them so that these kind of things are happening now.

Vorticity ,

Deregulation, vastly more flights, and lower budgets.

Deregulation is easy to go read about but it had huge impacts on the airline industry and spawned the current race to the bottom.

In 1990 there were a little more than 18,000 flights per day in the US. In 2024 there are more than 45,000.

The FAA budget in 1990 was $2.5B which is $31B when adjusted for inflation. The current FAA budget is $20B.

So, the FAA has less authority, a budget that is 1/3 smaller, and is dealing with tripple the air traffic when compared to 1990.

nutsack ,

damn i wish this was my flight

bradorsomething ,

You don’t.

nutsack ,

I absolutely do

ArbitraryValue ,

Does Boeing’s behavior qualify as gross negligence? I think they would have to be knowingly selling defective airplanes, or at least knowingly disregarding proper procedure when building those airplanes.

I’m not sure Alaska Airlines was even negligent.

HappycamperNZ ,

Depends if AA ran the maintenance, or if an item was missed in preflight, or a myriad of other things that may have contributed in any way.

Personally I think 1 billion is a money grab, and don’t know how they found that value. What is that - $20 million each or something for being on a plane that lost its door in flight and landed safely?

pennomi ,

Because it’s intended to be punitive, not a reparation.

jumjummy ,

That punitive judgement should be paid to some public fund versus a lottery for some random person. Reparations sure, but I don’t feel like events like this should be a lottery ticket.

tryptaminev ,

From what i understood from the new last week tonight episode, they were just lucky, that the door fell off already, before they reached altitude. Otherwise all the passengers would propbably have died. I think 20 million dollars is perfectly appropriate for being subjected to hours of panicy fear of death.

And if you would put your life on the line to win 20 Million Dollars, that is your personal choice. I wouldnt.

Finally you need to consider that the 1 Billion is the start of negotiation, and the companies will aim for much lower. If they just start with idk. say 100 million, the company would try to haggle it down to 10 million.

harderian729 ,

I think it should be both.

Hang’em high.

partial_accumen ,

I’m not sure Alaska Airlines was even negligent.

Where I’m guessing they’re going on this is the Alaska Airlines actions on the pressurization computer. There was a fault detected, and the tech assumed the computer was bad because the fault cleared on its own. The computer was replaced. I think this happened two times.

The fault the door shimmying slightly releasing pressure because it wasn’t bolted.

baru ,

Plus I’m a previous flight passengers apparently reported a whistling sound. See youtu.be/ROeGKs4xTfs?t=16m33s

baru ,

I’m not sure Alaska Airlines was even negligent.

Apparently in a previous flight passengers reported a whistling sound. Further, a pressurisation computer was apparently replaced multiple times instead of noticing why it was giving issues.

See youtu.be/ROeGKs4xTfs?t=16m33s

Donjuanme ,

Man, these are the people who define excessive litigation. I understand they are asking for way more than they want to actually receive. I think a million dollars per passenger would be excessive (but I’m not against an airline company be taught a lesson), a million dollars divided amongst all the passengers and crew, along with reimbursement for any travels delays etc would be more than I expect they’ll get, but asking for a billion to be split 3 ways is lunacy, and probably only there to get clicks on links now that I think about it. I’m just contributing to their goal…

Modern_medicine_isnt ,

You forget, the lawyers get $999,999,997. So the passengers actually each get a dollar.

Cort ,

A million dollars would only represent .01% of the 10 billion profit they made last year. That’s not even a slap on the wrist. If a preventable malfunction puts 100+ customers lives at risk, the penalty should be WAY higher.

HappycamperNZ ,

$1 billion - 10%.

Yeah, should be higher looking at that content, but if you want to punish the airline the value shouldn’t go to the passengers.

PatFussy ,

Peak gimme

FiskFisk33 ,

Punitive damages are damages that are awarded in addition to contemporary damages. They are awarded as punishment for the defendant’s serious misconduct and as a means of deterring the defendant and others from such behavior.

If a company cuts corners to land a billion dollar deal, if you punish them in the millions, it wont have much of an effect.

Donjuanme ,

If there’s a billion dollar deal how much is profit and how much is expenses?

I’m not against fining Alaska a billion dollars, I am against 3 people being the ones to see the result of that fine. Much the same way I’m not against there being a billion dollar deal, I’m against the CEOs taking 80% of that deal as profit and the workers not seeing anything of it.

FiskFisk33 ,

oh, i assumed it was a class action lawsuit?

Donjuanme ,

I don’t think there are enough people in this to constitute a class?

Classes are for when there’s an unknown amount of victims, and it’s up to the victims to determine if they fit the billing. This is the opposite, they know exactly how many victims there are, and who those victims were, it would be up to each victim to file a lawsuit, and other victims will have no access to joining into this lawsuit (unless the prosecution invites them on, maybe to as a way to get their testimony?)

bradorsomething ,

I like the way you think. How much to kill the people you care about? Got any kids? How cheaply can industry kill them? We need a real low price, no haggling here.

I appreciate that you understand their death should be a low cost business expense when designing things. Their mangled bodies can reduce overall price if we can factor in their cost fractionally over every unit. We can’t regulate away the unknown, so at least we can know your personal family minimum price to kill them in any horrible manner to budget correctly.

harderian729 ,

🤡

whotookkarl ,
@whotookkarl@lemmy.world avatar

100-200 million is going to do nothing to dissuade Boeing from continuing to race to the bottom with their QC, there have been multiple recent years they bought back stock at 4, 5, 6 billion per year. It’s not just about restitution to the victims, it’s also about using fines to fix the systemic problems to keep it from happening again.

avidamoeba ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Not that I don’t want to see Boeing pay a cool B, but can they seek damages over a hypothetical?

Cort ,

I mean, the door didn’t hypothetically fly off the plane. They’re asking for punitive damages, so they want the court to punish the airline financially

ByteJunk ,
@ByteJunk@lemmy.world avatar

I’m in the same boat.

Boing sold their soul for profit and it’s biting them hard, as it should, but this sounds more like an airline maintenance issue rather than some sort of design or manufacturing defect, no?

toast ,

Boeing was sending them out the door like this and it was a new plane. They’ve had quality issues that they haven’t been addressing

FiskFisk33 ,

The door came off the line from boeing missing some of the bolts holding it in entirely.

Engineers at boeing had flagged for issues in the 737 construction line, and even recommended it be stopped, and issues worked out before something dangerous happened. But the higher ups didn’t want to stop production due to, what else, money.

This is according to a whistleblower inside Boeing.

Steve ,

Which is the only thing Boeing cares about so it might just work

CobblerScholar ,

Right after John Oliver just shined his huge spotlight on the company too

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