American Airlines is facing a lawsuit over allegations that a faulty overhead locker led to a passenger sustaining severe and disabling injuries when the locker suddenly opened without warning and an ‘excessively’ bag fell out of the locker and onto the victim.
Marida Guerrero, from Tampa, has filed a lawsuit against American Airlines in a Florida district court, accusing the carrier of negligence for failing to keep the overhead locker in good working order.
The problem, however, is that Guerrero will have her work cut out, proving that the overhead locker was defective and not well maintained as the accident occurred three years ago.
On May 9, 2021, Guerrero was flying between Dallas Fort Worth, and Tampa on American Airlines flight AA1981 when the overhead locker located directly across from her suddenly opened as the plane touched down for landing.
At that moment, an “exceptionally large and heavy piece of luggage” fell out of the locker and onto Guerrero. She says she suffered a “severe” injury that has left her permanently disabled.
According to Guerrero, a flight attendant had closed the overhead locker prior to takeoff, and the locker hadn’t been opened by anyone else during the flight, so the blame for the accident can’t be shifted onto another passenger.
That might seem like an interesting defense, but that’s exactly the excuse that Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus used in September 2020 when it faced a similar lawsuit from a passenger who had been injured by a large bottle of Duty Freeze liquor that fell out of an overhead locker.
Aer Lingus blamed the accident on another passenger who had moved his own with such force that the bottle of alcohol was dislodged during the May 2018 flight.
The airline filed a third-party complaint against the passenger in an attempt to risk financial responsibility and make him responsible for any damages arising from the accident. In the end, however, an out-of-court settlement was reached between all the parties.
Perhaps one of the most pertinent parts of Guerrero’s lawsuit is her belief that the bag that fell on was simply too heavy and shouldn’t have been in an overhead locker in the first place.
Many airlines heavily restrict the weight of hand luggage, and although you might think this is simply a money-making ploy to get passengers to pay for checked luggage, the idea is also to prevent the risk of injuries to both passengers and flight attendants.
Some airlines have more generous hand luggage weight limits than others, with the likes of British Airways allowing passengers to bring hand luggage weighing 23kg for each item – more than three times the limit of many rivals.
American Airlines, however, goes one step further. It doesn’t have an advertised weight limit at all.
The carrier is yet to respond to Guerrero’s lawsuit which was filed on September 24.
It’s called a bin not a locker. It’s a overhead bin.