Passengers in BA Las Vegas fire file lawsuit against Boeing and GE
Legal action is being taken against Boeing and General Electric over the fire which broke out on a British Airways jet at Las Vegas earlier this year.
A lawsuit has been lodged by a group of 65 passengers who claim to have suffered injury when ‘uncontained catastrophic engine failure’ caused a fire to break out as the 777 prepared for take-off at Las Vegas Airport in September.
The lawsuit had been filed with the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, where Boeing has its headquarters.
BA Flight BA2276, due to fly to London Gatwick, was moments away from becoming airborne when the failure happened, but the pilot made a successful emergency stop.
Stewarts Law and its US Counsel, the Wisner Law Firm say the passengers, from the US, UK, Northern Ireland, Ireland and Germany, suffered both ‘physical and psychological’ injuries and are seeking damages for ‘pain, suffering, emotional stress as well as financial losses’.
They claim that at the time of the accident the Boeing aircraft, equipped with GE engines, was ‘defective and unreasonably dangerous in a number of important respects’.
Four years ago, the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a mandatory Airworthiness Directive requiring detailed inspection of parts of the component which failed- the HP Compressor Section – due to safety concerns.
James Healy-Pratt, head of aviation and travel at Stewarts Law, stressed the action is not against BA.
"Our clients are not critical of BA and feel that the pilots and cabin crew performed heroically in guiding the aircraft to an emergency stop, and then evacuating all occupants away from the burning aircraft in difficult circumstances," he said.
"However the interim report from the NTSB clearly accepts that there was an uncontained failure within the High Pressure compressor section of the GE-90 engine, which caused serious damage to the British Airways Boeing 777 at a critical time during its take-off roll.
"Given the justified safety concerns of the FAA back in 2011 over this component of the GE-90 engine, our clients deserve the real truth of how this failure happened."
One passenger, Dominic Worthington from London, said: "I still suffer from the incident and have sleepless nights, flashbacks and stress. It’s difficult to get over something like this, you just don’t expect it would ever happen to you. Despite my struggle to get over the incident I know we are all very lucky not to have been more seriously injured."
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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