Summary
- Boeing and Alaska Airlines deny obligation for the defective aircraft incident, difficult passenger lawsuits looking for damages.
- Spirit Aerosystems, the installer of the door plug, was not named within the lawsuits. Boeing states other parties can have contributed to the accident.
- Boeing admits to mistakes in door plug installation, and inability to provide maintenance documentation for N704AL.
Passengers aboard the now infamous Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 can expect a challenge to lawsuits after each Boeing and the airline have filed court documents disavowing any liability. In keeping with a report by a Washington DC area newspaper, each the plane manufacturer and the airline that operated the defective aircraft are denying obligation for the incident.
Immediately following the failure of a door plug on flight 1282, which resulted in cabin decompression and compelled the aircraft to return to Portland (PDX), passengers filed as many as three separate lawsuits in multiple courts against each Boeing and Alaska Airlines. In a single lawsuit, filed in Multnomah County, Oregon, three passengers were looking for $1 billion in damages.
Photo: NTSB
Alaska Airlines and Boeing have each claimed innocence in a separate lawsuit filed within the US District Court of Washington. In court documents filed on Monday, the planemaker and airline argue that they weren’t accountable for the aircraft’s defectiveness.
Boeing claims that the aircraft was not properly maintained or utilized by individuals and/or entities aside from the plane manufacturer. Alaska Airlines, for its part, said the damage and private injuries caused to passengers onboard the flight were brought on by entities outside of the airline and its control.
Boeing statement
Spirit Aerosystems, which originally installed the door plug, shouldn’t be named as a defendant within the three lawsuits. The attorney representing the passengers within the US District Court of Washington case was unable to answer Easy Flying’s inquiry.
Boeing, nevertheless, responded with the next statement:
“In a solution to a criticism filed in federal court yesterday, Boeing included a defense that parties aside from Boeing might need contributed to the accident. This can be a defense routinely asserted within the initial stages of litigation.”
Boeing added that it had amended language in its court filings to make clear that it was not suggesting that Alaska Airlines was accountable for the incident.
A change of tone
The court documents are one other development in a series of confidence-shaking headlines for the reason that flight. Five days after the accident, Boeing had a unique tone when it faced the general public. Then, Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dave Calhoun said, “We’re going to approach this – primary – by acknowledging our mistake.”
Photo: NTSB
Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident, went before the US Senate on March sixth and said that Boeing was “stonewalling” its investigation. Days later, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US Department of Justice had begun a criminal investigation into Boeing.
The criminal investigation coincided with recent congressional reports that saw that Boeing and its employees were confused about its safety systems, that are required to fulfill federal workplace safety standards regarding the assembly of aircraft.
Photo: Andrew Crider | Easy Flying
The aircraft involved in Alaska 1282, registered N704AL, had its pressurization fail light illuminated for days before the door plug failed. These had prevented the aircraft from maintaining certification for prolonged flight over water. While the NTSB investigation and journalists looking into the matter had discovered that Alaska Airlines knew a few potential problem with the aircraft, Alaska maintains there was nothing that suggested this was a security issue, or that the aircraft must be pulled from service.
Meanwhile, Boeing also noted mistakes with the door plug installation prior to the aircraft’s delivery. The planemaker itself would perform maintenance on N704AL; nevertheless, it has been unable to provide documentation about this maintenance to investigators. While it’s unclear if this motion was deliberate or a straightforward inability to carry onto security camera footage, it was recently uncovered that recordings of the upkeep had been overwritten.