A group of passengers on a Frontier Airlines plane that made an emergency landing at Las Vegas Harry Reid International Airport in October have filed a lawsuit against the carrier, claiming it was negligent for keeping them on the smoke-filled aircraft for nearly an hour.
The lawsuit was filed last week in a Nevada district court by 19 of the passengers who were onboard Frontier Flight 1326 from San Diego, which made an emergency landing on October 5 when a “pungent and acrid” smell started to fill the cabin and cockpit.
The emergency landing made headlines around the world when video footage caught the moment that flames and smoke shot out of the main landing gear of the Airbus A321 aircraft as it came to a halt on the runway.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has yet to establish the cause of the odor that prompted the emergency landing, although a preliminary accident report notes that just two minutes before the pilots declared an emergency, the onboard computer system logged a fault with a fan that cools the avionics compartment.
The flight was in the final minutes of what had been an otherwise routine flight from San Diego when the cabin crew first noticed a chemical-like odor in the cabin.
The flight attendants alerted the pilots, who, just a short time later, also started to smell the same odor in the cockpit. The pilots quickly donned their oxygen masks as the smell worsened and declared an emergency.
Following an emergency checklist, the pilots placed the aircraft into the ‘electrical emergency configuration’, which took out the First Officer’s cockpit display screens, radio, and transponder.
“As the dense smoke filled the cabin of Flight 1326, the cabin of the aircraft became extraordinarily hot, and passengers were further traumatized as emergency vehicles were seen assembling on the runway below,” the lawsuit filed against Frontier alleges.
“The passengers in the cabin were provided with no information about what was occurring inside or outside the aircraft and received no notification that an onboard emergency had been declared.”
The complaint continues: “Flight 1326, with an onboard emergency declared, crash landed at Harry Reid International Airport with a hard landing that, in addition to the aforementioned smoke filling the cabin and observable flames pouring from under the plane, resulted in the tires on the aircraft exploding, resulting in a further fire on the aircraft, and collapse of the landing gear which required on board systems and emergency services to extinguish the blaze as the plane dropped onto the runway and the landing gear collapsed.”
Rather than being immediately evacuated from the plane, however, the lawsuit alleges that the terrified passengers were “held on a sweltering smoke-filled aircraft for nearly an hour” before eventually being deplaned via mobile airstairs.
The lawsuit alleges that Frontier Airlines failed to properly repair, maintain, and inspect the aircraft in the lead-up to the accident.
The passengers claim they are still suffering from shock, emotional distress, and pain as a result of the emergency landing.
Lawyers for Frontier Airlines are yet to respond to the complaint.
The lawsuit also notes that while the pilots donned their oxygen masks to protect themselves from the fumes, the oxygen masks in the cabin were not deployed. However, passenger oxygen masks are only used during decompression events when oxygen in the cabin is depleted.
The reason for this is that passenger oxygen masks do not form an airtight seal on the face and can leak pure oxygen into the cabin. In the case of a so-called ‘smoke, fire or fume’ event, deploying the oxygen masks could make the situation far worse.
