Plane Crash Settlement Amounts: What Shapes What a Case May Recover

If an Insurer Makes an Offer: What a Plane Crash Settlement Actually Represents

A settlement is a negotiated agreement that resolves a civil claim for damages, either before a lawsuit is filed or while one is pending. The injured person or the family agrees to release the claim, and the other side agrees to pay. It is not a verdict, which a judge or jury decides. It is also not a government finding. A National Transportation Safety Board probable-cause determination, a Federal Aviation Administration enforcement action and a criminal case are all separate from a private damages claim.

Many aviation settlements are confidential, so the amounts never become public. The figures that do surface tend to be the unusual ones, which makes them a poor guide. An "average plane crash settlement" figure circulated online is not drawn from any reliable public dataset.

Families and injured survivors are often approached by insurers or carriers shortly after an accident. Because a settlement is a final release, a person weighing an early offer may want to know what claims it would give up, which parties it covers, and whether the facts of the accident are yet known. Those are questions a conversation with an attorney can help sort out.

Who May Be Responsible: The Federal and State Law Layers That Govern Aviation Claims

Aviation claims sit on two legal layers. Federal aviation law sets the rules for flying itself: FAA certification of aircraft and pilots, airworthiness directives (mandatory safety fixes the FAA issues for aircraft or parts) and the operating rules that air carriers and other operators follow. State tort law decides most of the claims an injured person or family brings: negligence, wrongful death and product liability.

The state layer is where much of the variation lives. Limitation periods, fault rules and wrongful-death damages rules differ from state to state. The state whose law governs a claim can change who may bring it, how long they have, and which losses the law recognizes.

Federal preemption is the question of whether federal law displaces part of a state claim. In aviation it is contested and fact-specific. For a family, that means the answer can turn on what kind of claim is brought and against what kind of operator, rather than on a single rule that fits every case.

The potential defendants in an aviation accident usually fall into a few groups:

• the aircraft operator, such as an airline, charter company or flight school
• the aircraft manufacturer
• the makers of individual components
• maintenance providers
• in some cases, air traffic control, which is a federal function

Each group can be subject to a different legal theory and a different body of rules, which is one reason a small plane crash and an airline accident can unfold so differently even when the injuries are similar. The shape of a plane crash lawsuit follows from which parties were involved. If you are trying to understand your situation, a useful starting point is listing who operated, built and maintained the aircraft, and where the crash occurred.

When the Montreal Convention Applies — and What It Does

The Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air (the Montreal Convention, 1999) is an international treaty that governs air carrier liability for international carriage between countries that have joined it, including many flights to and from the United States. For a covered trip, the Convention, rather than state wrongful-death or personal-injury law, sets the core rules for claims against the carrier, including where a claim may be brought.

The Convention uses a two-tier structure for passenger injury and death. Up to a set threshold, the carrier is liable without the passenger having to prove fault. Above that threshold, the carrier can avoid liability only by proving it was not negligent. The threshold is expressed in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a unit of account based on a basket of currencies, so its dollar value moves with exchange rates. The limits are periodically revised under the Convention's own procedures. In practical terms, for a family on a covered flight, the first tier does not depend on proving the carrier did anything wrong, while the portion of a claim above the threshold can be contested on negligence.

Two limits on the Convention's reach matter. Its liability rules apply to the air carrier, not necessarily to a manufacturer or a maintenance provider, whose responsibility may still be decided under other law. And domestic U.S. flights are not governed by the Convention; they fall under state tort law.

A crash over the open ocean can bring in yet another federal law. The Death on the High Seas Act, 46 U.S.C. § 30301 et seq., is a federal statute that may govern deaths occurring on international waters. It can limit the categories of damages available compared with some state wrongful-death laws. If your loved one was on an international trip or an overwater flight, the ticket or itinerary and the crash location are details that can help clarify which of these rules may apply.

The Damages Categories That Shape What a Settlement May Include

Damages are the losses the law allows a claim to seek. Economic damages have a measurable dollar cost, such as medical expenses, lost earnings, lost future earning capacity, and funeral and burial costs. Non-economic damages are real but harder to price, such as pain and suffering, loss of consortium (the loss of a spouse's companionship and support) and the loss of a loved one's companionship.

Which categories apply depends on the governing state's law. Wrongful-death statutes differ widely. Some limit who may bring a claim, such as the decedent's estate, a surviving spouse, children or parents, and some limit what each may recover. Families after a fatal crash often find that these rules shape an aviation wrongful death claim more than any other single factor.

Some states cap non-economic damages; others do not. Punitive damages, which are meant to punish rather than repay, generally require a showing beyond ordinary negligence; in California, Civ. Code § 3294 requires clear and convincing evidence that the defendant was guilty of oppression, fraud, or malice, and an employer is generally liable for an employee's acts only under the further conditions in § 3294(b), which for a corporate employer must involve an officer, director, or managing agent. They are not available in every aviation case.

For a survivor with lasting injuries, or a family that lost a parent's income, records of medical costs, earnings and household support are what connect these categories to the actual losses. Questions about who in the family may bring a claim, and whether any cap applies, are the kind an attorney can help work through.

What the NTSB Investigation Means for a Family's Civil Claim

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is the independent federal agency that investigates aviation accidents to find their probable cause, meaning its determination of why an accident happened, so that similar accidents can be prevented. It does not decide civil liability.

The NTSB's reports come in stages. A preliminary report is an early, factual account, and it can change as the work continues. It is not a finding. A final report contains the NTSB's completed probable-cause determination. When an investigation is still open, no probable cause has been stated, and families are often left waiting.

Federal law keeps those reports out of civil damages cases. 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." Under subsection (a) of the same section, a party in a judicial proceeding generally may not use discovery to obtain cockpit or surface vehicle recorder recordings, or the still images and parts of recorder transcripts the NTSB has not made public, unless a court, after an in camera review, decides that the material already available does not give the party sufficient information for a fair trial and that the additional discovery is necessary.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a separate agency. It writes and enforces the rules for aircraft, pilots and operators, while the NTSB investigates.

For accidents involving an air carrier and loss of life, 49 U.S.C. § 1136, the federal family-assistance statute, applies when the NTSB is the lead investigative agency. Section 1136 requires the NTSB chairman to designate a director of family support services and an independent nonprofit to coordinate family care. It also bars unsolicited communication about a potential injury or wrongful-death action, by an attorney or any potential party to the litigation, before the 45th day after the accident, for accidents involving an air carrier providing interstate or foreign air transportation, or a foreign air carrier in the United States.

Because the reports stay out of court, a civil claim rests on its own evidence: maintenance records, records of airworthiness directive compliance, flight data recorder (FDR) data, cockpit voice recorder (CVR) data, air traffic control communications and the aircraft's logbooks. For a family waiting on a final report, this means the civil side does not depend on the NTSB's conclusion, and keeping track of the investigation's status alongside any separate records can be useful when talking with an attorney.

Why Fault Is Not Always Simple in an Aviation Accident

Aviation accidents rarely have a single, obvious cause. Pilot or crew conduct, a mechanical failure, a maintenance error, a design or manufacturing defect, air traffic control, weather, or several of these together can all be in play. A crash, by itself, proves no one's fault and proves no defect.

Different legal theories fit different parties. Negligence is a claim that a person or company failed to use reasonable care, and it generally asks about a duty, a breach of that duty, causation and damages. Product liability is a claim that a defective aircraft, component or system caused the harm. In a strict-liability product claim, the question is not whether the maker was careless but whether the product was defective and whether the defect caused the injury. Whether either theory is met depends on the facts.

The type of flight you or your family member was on matters too. An airline flight under Part 121 and a charter flight under Part 135 follow different FAA operating rules, and those rules can bear on what care a court expects of the operator. A flight school, a sightseeing tour or a helicopter crash may each raise its own set of questions.

Fault rules also differ by state, and they can directly affect what a family receives. In most states, which use some form of comparative fault, a recovery may be reduced if the injured person or the person who died is found partly at fault. In the few states that follow contributory negligence, that finding can bar recovery entirely in some circumstances. That is why identifying every party involved, and the theory that fits each, can shape what a settlement may include.

If you are trying to sort out which parties and theories may fit what happened, you may want to consider a conversation with our attorney about the flight, the aircraft and the people involved.

What Families and Survivors Often Gather — and Why It Matters

Records tend to carry these cases, and some can be lost, overwritten or never preserved. While an investigation is active, the NTSB often holds the wreckage and the flight recorders. Other records, such as maintenance logs, operator communications and purchase records, may not be preserved automatically.

If you were hurt, or you lost someone, the materials that usually matter include:

• medical records and bills
• photographs and video from the scene
• the aircraft's maintenance and inspection records, as they become available
• the ticket, booking confirmation or charter agreement
• communications with the operator
• the names and contact details of witnesses
• any letters, emails or offers from the carrier or its insurer

Deadlines matter as much as documents. A statute of limitations is the deadline for filing a civil claim. These deadlines vary by state and by the type of claim, and missing one can bar a claim entirely. The deadline that applies depends on the state whose law governs and on the type of defendant, which in a small plane crash or an airline accident may involve several parties at once.

This is often the stage where families have the most questions about what the investigation's timeline means for a civil claim, and a conversation with an attorney can help clarify which rules may apply.