A flight attendant placed a cup of hot coffee on passenger Lourdes Cervantes’ tray table. Then the passenger in the row ahead of her reclined. That caused the coffee to spill on Cervantes lap. Cervantes suffered second degree burns. She sued Continental.
Does she have a case?
Domestic travelers can hold the airline liable
A jury in Washington state handed down a $26 million verdict against Avco Lycoming as a result of a fatal Cessna 172 crash that killed three people in 2008. The jury’s award included $6 million in punitive damages, designed to punish Lycoming for consciously disregarding the safety of the flying public.
It’s the second time a jury has
This Robinson R44 crash was in Australia.
Witnesses said that nearby restaurant staff “grabbed every fire extinguisher in the building, but there were too many flames . . . There was nothing anyone could do.”
No occupant of a properly-designed helicopter should be burned in an otherwise survivable impact. Unfortunately, the fuel tanks installed in
The FAA allows Boeing to certify its own design work. That means that, at least to some extent, Boeing now regulates itself. That never seemed like such a great idea to me. Afte
r all, isn’t it the FAA’s job to make an independent determination that an aircraft design is safe? Does it make sense for the FAA
The Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Center (“JACDEC”) is an airline safety think-tank in Germany. Last week, it rated the safety records of 60 air carriers worldwide. It considered the number of crashes and fatalities each airline has experienced – regardless of cause – since 1983. Its “time-weighted”
methodology placed the greatest emphasis on recent crashes.
The
An Fixed-Base Operator will sometimes tell the pilot to whom it rents an aircraft that, in the event of an accident, the pilot may be held responsible for the FBO’s deductible. From that, pilots sometimes conclude that their liability will be limited to the amount of the deductible, and that everything else is "covered."
Not
The plaintiffs’ attorney in the Lidle case told the press that, once the judge ruled that certain key evidence would be kept out of trial, a defense verdict was a foregone conclusion.
The plaintiffs wanted to tell the jury about an incident where, according to a Cirrus flight instructor, a Cirrus’ controls locked up
American Airlines Flight 587 encountered wake turbulence. The pilot countered with rudder inputs. The rudder inputs were excessive, the tail assembly failed, and the aircraft crashed, killing 265 people.
The NTSB determined that the Airbus’ rudder controls are unduly sensitive and make it easy for a pilot to overstress the aircraft’s structure, causing a catastrophic failure. Now
Today a French court of appeals reversed the conviction for criminal manslaughter against the Continental Airlines mechanic involved in the Air France Concorde crash.
That brings the criminal proceedings to a close 12 years after the airliner went down. I wrote here that the proceedings would do nothing for the families. To the extent that the
The Montreal Convention requires airlines to compensate international travelers who are injured as a result of an “accident.” If the passenger is killed, the Montreal Convention requires the airline to compensate the family members. But the Convention considers neither an airliner’s pilots nor its flight attendants to be “passengers.” Thus, crew members’ claims (or the