Plane Crash Survivor Injuries: What the Law Covers and What Comes Next

Injuries Survivors Carry After a Plane Crash

Plane crash survivors can be left with many kinds of harm. These include blunt-force trauma, spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, broken bones, soft-tissue injuries, burns and smoke inhalation. Psychological trauma, including post-traumatic stress, is also part of the picture for many survivors. Some injuries come from the impact itself. Others come from what follows: a fire after the crash, the struggle to get out of the cabin, or the rescue.

That difference can matter later. A claim may look at the impact, and also at the fire, the evacuation and the response, and at whether each part played a role in the injury. The question each time is what happened, in what order, and why.

How serious an injury is, and whether it is permanent, bears on the kinds of damages the law may allow. Those kinds often include medical expenses, lost earnings and pain and suffering. They depend on the injury, on proof of its cause and on the governing state's law. A short hospital stay and a lifelong injury raise very different questions about future care and work.

This page does not cover medical treatment. It covers the legal ground that the injury sits on. Every question below starts from the injury: who may be responsible for it, what must be proven, and which law decides.

How Federal and State Law Divide Aviation Accident Cases

Aviation accident cases run on two separate layers of law, and keeping them apart makes the rest easier to follow.

The federal layer sets the safety rules. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the federal agency that regulates aircraft, operators and pilots. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is a separate federal agency that investigates aviation accidents. Its job is safety: learning what happened so it does not happen again. Its job is not to decide who owes damages to whom.

The state layer covers most claims for damages. Negligence, product liability and wrongful death are mostly matters of state tort law. A tort is a civil wrong that one person or company can be sued for. Each state writes its own version. Limitation periods are one example. A statute of limitations is the deadline for filing a lawsuit, and it differs from state to state. The same goes for how fault is divided and what damages are allowed. No single national rule applies.

Federal law can control the claim itself in some situations. One is a death over the open ocean. The Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA) is a federal statute that can govern wrongful death claims when the death happens on the high seas, beyond a distance from shore that the statute sets. It does not take over every aviation case, and federal preemption depends on the specific law and facts involved.

For a survivor or a family, this structure leads to a practical question: which state's law applies? That answer shapes every deadline and every damages question that follows. Our plane crash lawsuit page walks through the wider case structure.

What the NTSB Investigation Does — and Does Not — Decide

The NTSB's work and a civil claim run on separate tracks, even though they look at the same event.

The NTSB investigates to find the probable cause of an accident. That is its formal conclusion about why the accident happened, stated for safety purposes. A preliminary report comes early and sets out initial facts. It does not state a probable cause. A final report comes after the full investigation, and the probable cause appears there. While an investigation is open, no probable cause has been stated. A preliminary report is not a finding of cause, and anyone treating it as one is getting ahead of the NTSB.

Federal law also draws a firm line between these reports and a damages case. Under 49 U.S.C. § 1154, subsection (b) states: "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."

So the outcome of the investigation does not decide a civil claim either way. A survivor's case has to build its own record of what happened and why. If the investigation is still open when a survivor or family begins to think about legal action, that does not by itself stop a civil claim from going forward. The claim and the investigation move on their own schedules.

The same statute also limits cockpit recordings, which comes up in the evidence section below.

For families after an accident involving an air carrier, a company that carries passengers or cargo for pay, a separate law applies. 49 U.S.C. § 1136 requires the NTSB to name a director of family support services as a point of contact and to designate an independent nonprofit organization, with experience in disasters and posttrauma communication with families, to coordinate the emotional care, psychological care, and family support services of passengers and their families. This applies to accidents within its terms that result in a loss of life and that the NTSB leads. The NTSB must also, as far as practicable, brief families before any public briefing about the accident, its causes and other findings. The statute adds that, for accidents it covers involving an air carrier providing interstate or foreign air transportation, or a foreign air carrier in the United States, no unsolicited communication about a potential personal injury or wrongful death action may be made by an attorney or potential party to an injured person or a relative "before the 45th day following the date of the accident."

Who May Be Responsible — and What a Claim Has to Show

People who survived a crash often wonder who answers for it. The law looks at that question by type of party, and the answer always depends on the facts.

The parties whose conduct or products may be examined can include:

• the aircraft operator, such as an airline or other air carrier;
• a charter operator, which flies under the FAA's Part 135 rules (the federal operating rules for on-demand and commuter air carriers);
• the pilot;
• the maintainer of the aircraft;
• the manufacturer of the aircraft or of one of its components;
• air traffic control.

More than one may be involved. A crash alone does not prove that any of them did anything wrong. The small plane crashes page explains how private flights and Part 135 charter flights differ.

A negligence claim, meaning a claim that someone failed to use reasonable care, has four parts. There must be a duty of care, a breach of that duty, causation linking the breach to the injury, and damages. All four must be shown. Whether they are met depends on what actually happened in that accident.

Product liability is a claim that a product was defective and that the defect caused the injury. In aviation, the claim may concern the aircraft or a component. A defect can lie in the design, in how one unit was made, or in the warnings and instructions. Whether a defect existed, and whether it caused the harm, depends on the facts. An accident does not prove a defect.

Where more than one party, or the injured person, shares fault, state law decides how responsibility is divided. Some states reduce recovery by a person's share of fault. Others bar recovery in some circumstances. These rules differ from state to state. The answer to who may be responsible shapes which claims are possible and which state's rules govern them.

Wrongful Death Claims When a Passenger Does Not Survive

Some families are reading this because a loved one did not survive. The law treats that loss as its own claim.

Wrongful death is a civil claim brought by surviving family members or the estate when a person's death is caused by another party's wrongful act or negligence. It is separate from, and can exist alongside, an injury claim by someone who survived the same flight. A family may face both at once: caring for an injured survivor while grieving another passenger.

Each state's wrongful death statute decides who may bring the claim. Depending on the state, that can include a spouse, children, parents or other dependents. The statute also sets the kinds of damages it allows. Those can include loss of financial support, loss of companionship, and funeral and burial expenses. The categories, and any limits on them, differ by state.

DOHSA, described above, is the federal exception for deaths on the high seas. It has its own damages rules, which differ from most state wrongful death statutes.

Deadlines are hard for grieving families. Wrongful death limitation periods are set by state law and differ from state to state, including when the period begins to run. A family does not have to work through the details alone during the first weeks. Still, the time limit exists while the grief is going on. Our aviation wrongful death page covers these claims in more depth.

Evidence That Shapes an Aviation Accident Claim

Because federal law keeps the NTSB's reports out of a civil damages case, the evidence behind a survivor's claim has to come from somewhere else.

The aircraft's records are central. A flight data recorder (FDR) is a device that stores the aircraft's flight information, such as speed, altitude and control inputs. A cockpit voice recorder (CVR) is a device that records sound in the cockpit. Federal law limits access to cockpit recordings. Under 49 U.S.C. § 1154(a), which addresses cockpit and surface vehicle voice or video recorders, a party in a court case generally may not use discovery to obtain a cockpit or surface vehicle recorder recording, or parts of a recorder transcript or still images from a video recorder that the NTSB has not made public. Discovery is the formal process for getting evidence from the other side. A court may allow discovery only after reviewing the material privately. It must find that the public material is not enough for a fair trial and that more is necessary; for a recording, the public transcript and any transcript parts already obtained in discovery must be insufficient. When it allows discovery, the court must issue a protective order limiting use of the material to that case.

Other records matter too. Maintenance records, inspection logs and records of compliance with airworthiness directives (FAA orders requiring fixes on aircraft) show how the aircraft was cared for. Air traffic control communications and radar data show what was said and where the aircraft was. NTSB factual materials raise their own questions. How a court treats material other than a Board report depends on the material and the court.

Then there is the human record. If you were hurt, the records that usually matter include medical records of the injuries, treatment and prognosis, and photos and video of the scene, the aircraft and the injuries. They also include the names and accounts of other passengers, crew and first responders. Survivors and families often keep bills, work records and anything they were handed after the crash.

Much of the key evidence sits with operators, manufacturers, maintainers or government agencies. Getting it may take formal legal process, such as a subpoena or discovery. If you are trying to sort out what evidence exists and who holds it, you may want to consider a conversation with our attorney about the records, reports and dates involved.

Why the Applicable State's Law Matters to Your Claim

Which state's law governs is not a technical side issue. It affects the deadline to file, how fault is divided and what damages may be allowed.

Limitation periods for personal injury and wrongful death differ by state. So does when the period begins to run and what exceptions apply. Fault rules also differ. Some states reduce recovery by the injured person's share of fault. Some cut off recovery once that share passes a point. A few follow stricter rules that can bar recovery altogether. Damages rules differ too. Some states limit certain kinds of damages, and wrongful death categories vary. DOHSA, where it applies, has its own limits. California's rules, for example, are California's alone and are not a national standard.

Courts decide which state's law applies through a choice-of-law analysis. They weigh contacts such as where the accident happened, where the people involved live, and other ties to the case. With an aviation accident, those contacts can point to several states. A flight may leave from one state and go down in another, carrying passengers from many more, with an aircraft built somewhere else again. The answer is not always obvious, and courts can differ on it.

For a survivor or family, this decides which deadline governs and which damages rules apply. People in this position often want to know which states are connected to the flight and what each state's rules would mean for them. Gathering where the flight began, where it ended, where everyone lives and where the aircraft and parts came from helps frame that question. The plane crash lawyer page covers how these cases usually proceed.