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.”

  • @[email protected]
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    fedilink
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    349 months ago

    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.

    • @baru
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      229 months ago

      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 https://youtu.be/ROeGKs4xTfs?t=16m33s

    • partial_accumen
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      119 months ago

      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.

    • @HappycamperNZ
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      79 months ago

      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
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        269 months ago

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

        • @jumjummy
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          -19 months ago

          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.

          • 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
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            59 months ago

            I think it should be both.

            Hang’em high.