Traveling either by land or by water may sometimes be enough when you’re traveling from state to state. But when you want to go from the United States to some European country, boarding a ship might mean a long journey before you can reach your destination. That’s why traveling by air may be the best option for you, most especially if you’re running on limited time. However, choosing air travel can unfortunately put you at risk in a plane crash. If you do get involved in one, and survive it, you can exercise your rights as an airline passenger with the following things for you consider from a legal standpoint:
- You can file a personal injury claim against the pilot who flew the plane that you boarded that then crashed.
Pilots are expected to hold a duty of care to all passengers of the plane that they’re flying.
- However, the pilot of the plane that you were a passenger of may have been relying too much on using autopilot mode or succumbed to jet lag.
- If the pilot survived the plane crash as well, you could sue them once you’ve proven that their negligence while in the cockpit caused the incident to happen and that you’ve received a significant amount of injuries because of it.
- You and your fellow plane crash survivors can also file a class-action lawsuit against the airline who hired a negligent pilot to fly any of their planes.
Aside from filing a lawsuit of your own against the pilot who flew the plane that crashed, you can also sue the airline where they’re reporting to work. But as airlines have a bigger budget and more resources to get attorneys to defend them, you should team up with other survivors of the same plane crash that you all got involved in and file a class-action lawsuit against the airline itself.
- Lastly, you can file a lawsuit against a Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controller under the Federal Tort Claims Act if the plane crash happened within United States airspace.
Air traffic controllers under the employ of the Federal Aviation Administration are supposed to direct traffic within United States airspace and give clear instructions to pilots as to what they should do so that they can land the planes that they’re flying safe and sound.
- However, an air traffic controller might have committed a mistake that caused the plane to crash.
- You can file a lawsuit against the air traffic controller themselves who caused the plane crash to happen, though doing it to a federal government employee is a bit more complex in which case you should seek counsel from a lawyer to help you with it.
The odds that you’ll get killed after the plane that you boarded crashed are only one out of roughly 30 million. However, that statistic doesn’t mean that you should just ignore all the safety regulations that airlines put in place to protect you and other passengers from harm. Besides, you wouldn’t want to get your name mentioned in some news report about a major plane crash that took away hundreds of lives, right? But if you got involved in a plane crash, you can apply the above-listed things for you to consider from a legal standpoint with the help of a lawyer who can help you get justly compensated for the injuries and trauma that you received.
