OAN’s Abril Elfi
3:03 PM – Sunday, March 3, 2024
Three passengers who were on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 when a door flew out midair are suing Boeing for $1 billion.
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Attorney Jonathan Johnson stated that Kyle Rinker and his girlfriend Amanda Strickland were seated just two rows diagonally behind the teenager who had his shirt sucked off when the door plug flew off in January on the Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet.
Also included in the lawsuit filed in Multnomah County, Oregon, late last month is Kevin Kwok, who was seated next to the two people.
“This is mostly about the systemic problems at Boeing, which is jeopardizing the lives of the entire traveling public who travel on Boeing aircraft,” Johnson told the press. “They should not be trusting luck to avoid a planeload of people being killed.”
According to Rinker, about five minutes into the flight “we heard the loud pop. We were just sitting there trying to relax … and then, that thing just happened. The oxygen masks come down, just like, ‘Oh, wow, something’s going on. We gotta get these on.’”
“The wind just came rushing through it. It was very, very cold all of the sudden, obviously, because you’re flying up there at 16,000 feet,” he continued.
Since the incident, Rinker claimed that hearing airplanes overhead frequently, where they reside, has been triggering.
“We have not been on a plane since. I’m not sure when that will happen again,” he said.
Since the incident on January 5th, when the flight headed for Ontario, California was forced to make an emergency landing back in Portland, Alaska and Boeing have been facing legal challenges on a regular basis. This lawsuit is just the most recent one. There were no reports of significant injuries.
Another lawyer, Mark Lindquist, who represents the rest of the passengers that were on the flight stated that their lawsuit against Boeing and Alaska had been expanded to include the allegation that passengers on a prior flight of the aircraft heard a whistling sound.
“There was a whistling sound coming from the vicinity of the door plug on a previous flight of the subject plane. Passengers apparently noticed the whistling sound and brought it to the attention of flight attendants who reportedly informed the pilot or first officer,” the lawsuit states.
It alleges that no known further action was taken “After the pilot checked cockpit instruments, which purportedly read normal.”
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) preliminary report, which was made public last month, is another source cited in the expanded lawsuit. It revealed that the cockpit door was intended to blow out in the event of depressurization and that pilots and crew were unaware of this design feature.
Allegations of physical and emotional harm, such as acute stress, anxiety, trauma, and hearing impairment, are made in the lawsuit. The amended filing included more passengers in the lawsuit.
The FAA grounded the Max 9 fleet after the incident in order to conduct additional investigations.
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