Aviation Accident Lawyer

Key Takeaways

• Aviation accident claims sit on two layers of law. Federal law governs flight itself, including Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules for aircraft, pilots and operators, and the investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). State law usually governs the injury claim, which means negligence, product liability and wrongful death.
• More than one party may share responsibility. That can include an operator, an aircraft owner, a manufacturer, a seller or a maintenance company. Which of them, if any, depends on the facts.
• Limitation periods, fault rules and damages rules differ from state to state. No single national rule governs every claim.
• The NTSB investigates and issues reports. Under federal law, no part of an NTSB accident report may be admitted into evidence or used in a civil action for damages.
• Preserving records and physical evidence is one of the first practical concerns for injured people and families, because so much of the evidence is held by others.

These points decide where a claim may be heard, whose rules apply and who may be named.

Does Your Situation Fit an Aviation Accident Claim?

Whether there is a claim depends on what happened, and the law asks specific questions about it. No single fact settles those questions, and the type of flight alone settles nothing.

The kind of operation comes first, because it decides which federal operating rules applied to the flight. An air carrier is a company that carries passengers or cargo for hire. Scheduled airlines operate under the FAA's Part 121 rules. A charter (Part 135) operator flies on-demand or smaller commercial trips under the FAA's Part 135 rules, and this group often includes air taxis and some air ambulance and sightseeing flights. General aviation covers private and business flying. Helicopter tours, flight-school training flights and experimental aircraft each raise their own questions about who was in control of the flight and of the aircraft.

Most claims then rest on one or more legal theories.

• Negligence asks four questions: whether someone owed a duty of care, whether they breached it, whether the breach caused the harm, and what damages resulted. Whether each element is met depends on the facts.
• Product liability is the law that applies when a product, such as an aircraft, an engine or a component, is claimed to have caused harm. It usually asks whether the product had a design defect, a manufacturing defect or a failure to warn, and whether that defect caused the injury. A crash does not prove a defect.
• Wrongful death is a claim that state law gives certain family members or a representative when a person dies because of someone else's wrongful act. Who may bring it, and what it covers, differ by state.

Where a death occurred far out over the ocean, a federal law called the Death on the High Seas Act may govern instead of state wrongful-death law. Where it applies, it narrows the damages available, as explained below.

For an injured passenger or a grieving family, the stake here is which rules and which theories are even on the table: the type of flight can change both. If you are trying to work out whether your situation fits, the facts that usually matter are the type of operation, who owned and operated the aircraft, what is known about the investigation, where the accident happened and the injuries involved. Writing those facts down, as far as they are known, is a common starting point for a conversation with an attorney.

How Aviation Accidents Happen: What the Investigation Means While You Wait for Answers

When investigators and courts ask what went wrong, they look at the same broad categories of contributing factors: pilot or crew conduct, mechanical or structural failure, maintenance error, air traffic control, weather, and design or manufacturing defects. In a single accident several of these often interact, so the answer to "what happened" may involve more than one cause and more than one party. This page describes those categories in general terms only. It does not state or suggest what caused any particular accident.

The NTSB is the independent federal agency that investigates civil aviation accidents. If you are following an investigation, the stage it has reached tells you how much is known:

• If the investigation is open, it is still underway and no conclusion has been stated.
• If a preliminary report has come out, it is an early summary of initial facts. It is not a finding of cause.
• If a final report has come out, it sets out the facts the NTSB developed and its conclusions.
• A probable cause is the NTSB's own statement, in that final report, of what it determined most likely caused the accident.

A probable cause is a safety finding and not a verdict. It is not a finding of civil liability. The law also keeps the two processes apart. Under 49 U.S.C. § 1154(b), "No part of a report of the Board, related to an accident or an investigation of an accident, may be admitted into evidence or used in a civil action for damages resulting from a matter mentioned in the report." A civil case therefore has to prove its facts through its own evidence and witnesses.

FAA regulations set the standards for airworthiness, pilot certification and flight operations. A violation of an FAA rule may be relevant to a negligence claim, but it does not automatically establish that anyone is liable. Whether it matters depends on the facts and on the state law that applies.

What this means for a family is that the NTSB's conclusions, however long they take, cannot simply be carried into court; the civil claim runs on its own track. Questions worth raising with an attorney include where the investigation stands and what evidence a civil case would need apart from it. Readers looking at how the NTSB records carrier events can see one example on our page about airline accident records from the NTSB.

Who May Be Responsible for Your Injuries or Loss: Potential Defendants by Type

Families often ask whether only the pilot or the company that sold the ticket can be responsible. The answer depends on who controlled what, and it matters because each party named may be held to a different standard under different rules.

• The operator or air carrier owes a duty of care to its passengers. Many states hold carriers that transport the public to a heightened standard as common carriers, but the standard depends on the state.
• The aircraft owner may face responsibility separately from the operator, depending on state law and on how the aircraft was being used.
• If a part or design is in question, the manufacturer of the aircraft, an engine or a component may face product-liability claims for a design defect, a manufacturing defect or a failure to warn, and a seller or distributor may be part of that product-liability chain, depending on state law.
• If inspection, repair or overhaul work is in question, a maintenance company or repair station may face negligence claims tied to that work.
• If federal employees were involved, such as FAA air traffic controllers, the federal government may be a defendant.

Claims against the United States follow the Federal Tort Claims Act, which begins at 28 U.S.C. § 2671 et seq. That section defines "Federal agency" to include the executive departments, the judicial and legislative branches, the military departments, independent establishments of the United States and corporations primarily acting as instrumentalities or agencies of the United States. It does not include any contractor with the United States. A private company working under a government contract is therefore not treated as the government under this definition. Claims against the United States also carry their own procedural requirements, which differ from a claim against a private party.

Naming a type of party here does not mean any party did anything wrong. Several parties may share responsibility, a single party may bear it, or no one may. If you are sorting this out, the questions that usually come first are who operated the flight, who owned the aircraft, who last worked on it and whether air traffic control played a part. An attorney can help match those answers to the parties, and to the rules, that may apply.

Evidence That Often Matters in Aviation Accident Cases

Much of the evidence in an aviation case is held by someone other than the injured person or the family, which shapes how a claim is built and why records are an early concern.

The records that often matter include:

• recorder data, including flight data recorder information and cockpit voice recordings;
• maintenance logs and records of compliance with airworthiness directives, which are FAA safety orders requiring specific inspections or fixes;
• air traffic control communications and radar data;
• the NTSB's investigative docket and factual reports;
• the operator's safety management, training and operational records;
• physical evidence from the aircraft and its wreckage;
• medical records documenting the injuries and their treatment;
• photos, video, messages from the operator and the names of witnesses.

Cockpit recordings are tightly controlled by federal law. Under 49 U.S.C. § 1154(a), a party generally may not use discovery to obtain a cockpit recorder recording, or any part of a transcript or still image the NTSB has not made public. Discovery is the court process for getting evidence from the other side. A court may allow it only after a private (in camera) review and a decision that the public material is not enough for a fair trial. When a court allows it, it issues a protective order limiting use to that proceeding, and material admitted into evidence is placed under seal.

If you were hurt, the records within your own reach usually include medical records, bills, photos, travel documents and any messages from the operator or an insurer. Families after a death often hold similar papers. The formal process pursues the records held by operators, manufacturers and government agencies. Knowing which records exist, and who holds them, is often the first concrete step in understanding a claim.

Injuries and What the Law May Allow in Damages

The harm from an aviation accident is often severe. People are left with burns, fractures, spinal injuries or brain injuries, and families are left with lives that have changed for good. The law sorts damages into categories, and which categories apply depends on the state, the type of claim and the facts.

Economic damages are the financial losses. They can include past and future medical expenses, lost income and lost earning capacity, rehabilitation costs and future care costs.

Non-economic damages cover losses that are not financial, including pain and suffering, emotional distress and loss of consortium, which means the loss of a spouse's companionship and support. Whether these are available, and whether a state caps them, differs by state.

Wrongful-death damages are set by the wrongful-death statute of the state whose law applies. Depending on the state, they may include loss of financial support, funeral and burial expenses and loss of companionship. The categories, and who may recover them, vary.

The Death on the High Seas Act is a federal law that may apply when a death occurs on the high seas, beyond a set distance from the U.S. shore. It can reach certain flights over open ocean. Where it applies, it limits recovery to pecuniary losses, meaning financial ones, which is narrower than many state wrongful-death laws. Whether it applies depends on where the death occurred.

An injury does not by itself prove anyone's fault, and this page gives no medical advice. What the law may allow depends on proving liability first, and then on which state's rules govern. For someone weighing these categories, the records that tend to document them are medical bills, treatment notes, proof of lost income and, after a death, funeral costs and records of the support the person provided. Questions about which state's rules apply, and whether the Death on the High Seas Act reaches the flight, are among those an attorney can help sort out.

Federal Law, State Law, and Why the Distinction Matters for Your Claim

Two bodies of law govern an aviation accident claim, and they do different jobs. Federal aviation law, including the Federal Aviation Act and FAA regulations, sets the standards for airworthiness, certification and operations. State tort law governs most civil claims for negligence, product liability and wrongful death.

Federal preemption is the question of whether federal law displaces a state-law claim or standard. It is contested in some aviation cases, and the answer depends on the specific claim and the federal statute involved. Federal law also controls particular situations. The Federal Tort Claims Act governs claims against the United States, and the Death on the High Seas Act may govern certain deaths at sea.

Federal law also shapes what happens right after a major crash. Under 49 U.S.C. § 1136, after an air carrier or foreign air carrier accident in U.S. airspace that causes loss of life, where the NTSB will lead the investigation, the NTSB names a director of family support services and designates an independent nonprofit organization to coordinate emotional care, psychological care and family support services. The NTSB must, to the maximum extent practicable, brief families before any public briefing. For an accident involving an air carrier providing interstate or foreign air transportation, or a foreign air carrier accident within the United States, the same section bars attorneys and potential parties from unsolicited communication about a potential injury or wrongful-death action to an injured person or a relative before the 45th day following the accident.

State law then decides much of the rest. Limitation periods, comparative or contributory fault rules and damages rules differ from state to state, and the time to file depends on the state whose law applies and on the type of claim. This national page does not set out any one state's deadlines. Our pages on Texas aviation accident claims and California aviation accident claims address those states separately, and neither state's rule is the rule elsewhere.

Sorting out which law applies, and which deadline, is often the point where a conversation helps most. You may want to consider requesting a case evaluation to talk through where the accident happened, the type of flight and the investigation's status with our attorney.