A group of 115 passengers who survived a miraculous emergency landing at Warsaw's Chopin Airport in November 2011 are seeking damages in a US court. The applicants are being represented by three legal offices from the US, Great Britain and Poland.
Jolanta Budzowska, who is representing the Polish claimants, is not disclosing how much her clients are seeking, but confirmed that the airplane manufacturer and a US servicing company are being prosecuted.
“[The passengers] are demanding compensation for the stress that they endured,” she told Polish Radio.
Budzowska noted that “a fundamental error” that the prosecution will be stressing is that a circuit breaker was found to be in the off position after landing, as found in the initial report.
“This fault was not signalled to the crew, either by the system, or in any other way,” she said.
The LOT Polish Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey nearly ended in disaster on 1 November 2011 after both sets of landing gear failed to work.
Captain Tadeusz Wrona managed to land the Boeing 767 aircraft on its underside, without harm to any of the 220 passengers on board.
Wrona was acclaimed as a hero in the Polish media. This week, a memoir is due to go on in sale in Poland, entitled I, Captain (Ja, Kapitan).
The 105 passengers who as of yet have not joined the legal action have one month left to do so before the two-year deadline expires.
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