Three passengers who brought a $1 billion lawsuit against aircraft manufacturer Boeing and Alaska Airlines over a door plug blowout on a flight in 2024 have settled with the companies out of court.
One of the attorneys representing the passengers told Oregon-based KPTV this week that the terms cannot be disclosed as part of the settlement agreement. The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs cannot file the same claim again.
Boeing built the 737 MAX 9 involved in the incident, and Alaska was the operator.
The three passengers initiated civil proceedings against the companies in March of last year, citing severe mental distress.
“They were left with a screen porch for an airplane,” attorney Jonathan Johnson told KPTV at the time. “They were left looking outside while they were flying in an airplane. Of course, at the time, they thought they were going to die in a plane crash. They were super distressed after landing.”
(Photo: AirlineGeeks | Katie Zera)
The plaintiffs were seeking $1 billion because the door plug could have gone into the aircraft’s engine or destroyed the tail, which “could have caused the entire plane to crash and killed a whole plane-full of people,” Johnson added.
The door plug failed about six minutes into the Alaska flight from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, in January 2024. The aircraft experienced a decompression, which damaged parts of the cabin interior and dropped unsecured items like cellphones, paper, clothing, and children’s toys onto the Portland suburbs below. The 737 MAX returned to the airport and landed without further incident. One flight attendant and seven passengers received minor injuries, and no one was killed.
A final report from the National Transportation Safety Board assigned ultimate responsibility to Boeing for failing to provide adequate training and oversight for its workers. The door plug was manufactured by Spirit AeroSystems, but the NTSB found it was removed from the aircraft fuselage and reinstalled with missing parts while at Boeing’s facility in Renton, Washington.
