3 passengers on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 where door plug blew out sue the airline and Boeing for $1 billion

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CBS News

Updated on: March 4, 2024 / 7:39 AM EST


Three passengers on the Alaska Airlines plane that had to make an emergency landing after a door plug blew off mid-flight are suing the airline and Boeing for $1 billion, claiming negligence caused the incident.

A complaint was filed Feb. 20 in Multnomah County, Oregon, on behalf of Kyle Rinker, Amanda Strickland and Kevin Kwok, all of whom were on board Alaska Flight 1282 when an unused exit door detached from the aircraft minutes into a scheduled trip from Portland to Ontario, California, in early January. Multnomah County includes Portland.

The lawsuit seeks both compensatory and punitive damages, to be determined at trial, from Boeing, the corporate giant that manufactured the 737 Max 9 jet flown by Alaska Airlines.

"As a direct result of the frightful, death-threatening failure of the Boeing aircraft, Mr. Kwok, Mr. Rinker, and Ms. Strickland suffered severe mental, emotional, and psychological injuries, including post-traumatic stress, and physical injuries," the lawsuit says, noting how the sudden pressure change inside the cabin "caused some passengers' ears to bleed."

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alaska-airlines-flight-1282-door-plug-blowout-1-billion-lawsuit-airline-boeing/

[Fullduplexxx]

1. People are nuts for boarding a plane

[maxsolomon]

4. People are nuts getting on electric scooters.

People are nuts getting on skis.
People are nuts getting on motorcycles.
People are nuts getting into autonomous driving vehicles.

People are nuts.

Jet travel is safer than almost every other method of transportation.

[EX500rider]

8. When just about every other mode of transport is more dangerous?

Roughly 100,000 flights take off and land every day all over the globe.

For instance flying is much safer than driving. According to the International Air Transport Association, out of every 7.7 million flights in 2021, there was just one crash. The overall fatality risk is 0.23% — you would need to fly every day for more than 10,000 years to be in a fatal plane crash.

On the other hand, the chances of dying in a car collision are about 1 in 101, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

[Tree Lady]

2. After watching John last night

I don't want to fly anything Boeing has made.

[cstanleytech]

3. I think it's time to largely abandon such lawsuits as well as other financial based fines for companies.

Instead we should shift to criminal charges with harsh punishments both for those responsible within the company and for the company as well where warranted with the harshest being the company being seized and it's assets sold.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. This is a "civil liability" thing not associated with regulatory agencies

so suits like this brought by impacted parties aren't going to go anywhere unless a judge dismisses them.

These won't preclude any future criminal prosecutions though. However note that in order to have such, Congress needs to... wait for it... pass (and/or update) the law (they set current punitive options in law, in general, and agencies are ham-strung by that).

[cstanleytech]

9. I only said largely not completely because it's clear that no amount of a financial penalty is really changing

anything as companies simply write it off as the cost of doing business.

[BumRushDaShow]

11. That's because the "low" penalties are set like that by the

in-cahoots Congress!

[cstanleytech]

12. I think holding them criminally responsible when they commit a crime might get better results though.

[BumRushDaShow]

13. Agree

but that needs to be authorized in law and in the few cases where it is and they try to go for a criminal prosecution (of say a CEO, etc), they often run into the same type of resource-intensive messes that you see happening when dealing with 45, and the end result is often settlements and what not.

[John Shaft]

7. They can do both

[maxsolomon]

5. LOL, a billion.

But we'll settle for a 1,000 times less than that...

[ShazzieB]

10. Only 3 passengers are suing?

I'm surprised it's not a lot more!

[Aussie105]

14. At the very least, I'd expect

the airline or its insurance company to buy me some new, clean underwear!

. . . when I get on a plane, I see dying as a real possibility . . . getting off the plane later with squishy underwear, not so much.

But yes, if physical trauma was involved, like ruptured eardrums, it would be a different story.
Not a fan of sudden decompression.