Passengers from Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 have sued Boeing after a door-like panel on its Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet broke off mid-flight, causing a rapid drop in pressure in the cabin, their lawyers said in a news release.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in a Seattle court, names six passengers and a family member as plaintiffs. She says the accident resulted in physical injuries, including concussions, bruises, difficulty breathing and bleeding ears, as well as emotional trauma. It also claims that many of the oxygen masks on the plane appeared to be inoperable. Boeing declined to comment.
“This nightmarish experience has caused ongoing economic, physical and emotional consequences that have understandably affected our clients,” Daniel Lawrence, an attorney at Stritmater Kessler Koehler Moore, said in a statement. He pointed to what he called “Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun’s frank admission that this terrifying event was Boeing’s ‘fault'” as the motivation behind the proposed class action. “We are going to deal with this No. 1 person admitting our mistake,” The Washington Post reported that Calhoun told employees during a company meeting on Tuesday.
The Jan. 5 accident on the plane flying from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to ground some Boeing 737 Max 9 planes during the investigation. This week, Alaska Airlines and United Airlines announced they had found broken devices in the same sections of the same type of aircraft in their fleets. “The safety of the public, not speed, will determine the timeline for returning the Boeing 737-9 MAX to service,” the FAA said.