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Airline sued for being

Legal Newsline reports on several lawsuits arising from the Southwest Airlines flight that skidded off the end of the runway at Chicago's Midway airport during snowy conditions in December 2005.  There was one fatality, a six year old boy who was a passenger in a car struck by the plane as it slid into the intersection. 

 A much luckier bystander claims he was injured by the plane's emergency chute and seeks to recover damages because Southwest is "despicably focused on keeping within flight schedules, punctuality and cost savings."  According to the complaint, Southwest "gave the pilots great discretion ... to make life-and-death policy decisions."  Those allegations would normally seem to be good things, but, in this case, the plaintiffs are alleging that the decision to land the plane may have been a poor one.  According to Boeing, the plane's manufacturer (and a defendant), it may have taken a plane about 5,800 feet of runway to stop int he snowy weather conditions that evening.  The runway is 5,826 feet long.

Posted by Joseph R. McFaul on Sunday, January 14, 2007 at 00:00 Comments (0)

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