A Southwest Airlines passenger claims she was left weeping in her seat during a flight from Los Angeles to Phoenix last August when a flight attendant spilled a scalding hot cup of tea in her lap.
Vestine Uwera has filed a lawsuit in the Los Angeles Superior Court against Southwest, claiming that not only was the flight attendant negligent but that the cup’s design was defective.
The lawsuit is just the latest in a number of increasing incidents involving passengers who have sustained serious burn injuries after being scalded by hot drinks passed to them by flight attendants.
In this latest case, Vestine was traveling with her then 3-year-old son aboard Southwest flight WN2294 to Phoenix on August 1, 2023.
During the short two-hour flight, Vestine says she requested a cup of hot tea, and the flight attendant serving her returned with a cup of ‘scalding hot water,’ which had another container with all of the tea-making condiments inside sitting on top.
Somehow, as the flight attendant served the cup of hot water to Vestine, it spilled into her lap soaked through her blanket covered abdomen and pelvic area.
Vestine says she was left in so much pain that she couldn’t even move and “openly wept in her seat” as the flight attendant who had served the cup apparently just walked off.
The civil complaint filed by Vestine’s attorneys alleges: “Neither the Southwest airline attendant who spilled the scalding hot water onto Plaintiff, nor any other Southwest airline attendant acknowledged, let alone expressed sympathy or provided assistance for Plaintiffs injuries and obvious distress.”
In fact, so obvious was the lack of help provided by the flight attendants on flight 2294 that the lawsuit claims another passenger “expressed his astonishment at how the attendants failed to provide any care to the plaintiff.”
Vestine didn’t end up receiving any medical care for the second-degree burns she had sustained until the plane arrived at Phoenix Sky Harbor, and she happened to encounter medical personnel in the terminal building.
At this point, Vestine had her half-naked body exposed to other passengers as she was assessed and treated before she was transported to the Arizona Burn Center.
Vestine says she still suffers pain from the injuries and was unable to hold her son for some time because of her burns. She is now suing Southwest for negligence and product liability because the cup containing the scalding hot water did not have a secure lid.
What’s surprising, though, is that even with an increasing number of scald injuries being reported by passengers, there are few airlines that provide hot beverages in closed containers like you might get in any coffee shop.
Last year, a Virgin Atlantic passenger pleaded with the carrier to stop serving hot beverages in open cups after he was badly burned by scalding hot coffee during a flight from Montego Bay in Jamaica to London Heathrow in January 2022.
Stuart Harris won £4,000 in compensation from Virgin Atlantic after making a claim under the Montreal Convention – an international treaty that makes airlines responsible for injuries sustained by passengers during an international flight.
Virgin Atlantic flight attendants rushed to Stuart’s aid and applied a special burn dressing to his scald injury, although Stuart says the incident could have been avoided altogether if airlines put lids on hot coffee cups.
Stuart pointed to the European low-cost airline Ryanair, which serves hot drinks in closed cups, although that isn’t always enough to prevent scald injuries.
In 2022, the family of an eight-year-old girl won a payout from Ryanair after she sustained burn injuries when a flight attendant allegedly failed to secure the lid on a hot coffee cup.
Ryanair contested the claim and insisted that the family had removed the lid from the cup, although the two sides eventually agreed to an out-of-court settlement.
Conclusion
Vestine’s scald injury lawsuit is unlikely to be the last, and even if Southwest did change the design of its cups, it wouldn’t guarantee that a passenger might not sustain a scald injury – just like in the Ryanair case from 2022.
If Vestine had been on an international flight, it would be relatively easy to make a claim under Article 17 of the Montreal Convention but it might end up being a lot tricker to prove negligence as in this case.
I was on two JetBlue flights this morning… had coffee on both. I don’t do anything with the lid but take it off and use it to rest the empty cream/sweetener packages on. I told the F/A on each I don’t need the lid, and they both said that they must serve it with the lid, and cautioned that it’s hot.