What to Expect From the Legal Process After an Aviation Accident
Aviation cases are among the most complex in civil litigation. Here’s what clients can expect:
Jurisdictional and Choice of Law Analysis: One of the first critical determinations involves where your case can be filed and which laws will apply. International flights may be governed by treaties like the Montreal Convention, while domestic crashes may involve complex analysis of state laws, federal regulations, where various parties are based, and more. The choice of jurisdiction can significantly impact potential compensation and case strategy.
Thorough Investigation Phase: After an accident, agencies like the NTSB and FAA launch detailed investigations. Simultaneously, it is critical that your aviation accident lawyer conducts an independent legal investigation—often uncovering facts that government findings overlook.
Legal Deadlines and Timeframes: The statute of limitations for aviation accident lawsuits can vary significantly depending on where the crash occurred, applicable international treaties, and details of airline operation. Your attorney ensures all deadlines are met while navigating these complex jurisdictional requirements.
Discovery and Litigation: These cases typically require extensive discovery, including review of flight data, maintenance logs, crew records, and internal company documents. Aviation litigation often exposes evidence not available in public reports.
Duration: A realistic timeframe for an aviation accident lawsuit—from initial investigation to case resolution—can last 18 to 36 months or more. Clients deserve honest expectations about the persistence that may be required.
Technical Complexity: Issues of product liability, negligence, and federal aviation regulations mean your legal team must be fluent in both law and aviation technology.
Understanding Your Legal Options After a Fatal Crash
Losing a family member in an aviation accident is devastating. You are forced to mourn the loss, go through the grieving process, and deal with complex legal challenges. But you don’t have to face these challenges alone; we understand these challenges and have decades of experience helping clients who have also suffered losses. One thing we can say for certain: Airlines and insurance companies may try to exploit this vulnerable period by pressuring families with inadequate settlement offers, sometimes within days of the tragedy. That’s why it is a good idea to speak with a lawyer as soon as you feel ready.
Immediate Priorities and Protective Measures
As we touched on above, airlines may offer settlements that seem substantial but often represent a fraction of what we consider full and fair compensation. These early offers—sometimes presented as "no strings attached"—frequently contain hidden clauses that waive critical legal rights and offer pennies to the dollar. Your first priority should be securing experienced legal representation before signing any documents or accepting any payments.
Types of Compensation Available
Wrongful death claims in aviation accidents can include:
Economic Damages: Lost future income, benefits, and financial support the deceased would have provided throughout their expected lifetime. For high earners or young victims, these calculations can reach into the millions.
Non-Economic Damages: Pain and suffering endured by surviving family members, loss of companionship, guidance, and consortium. Courts recognize the immeasurable value of relationships severed by preventable tragedies.
Punitive Damages: When gross negligence, willful misconduct, or corporate cost-cutting policies contribute to accidents, courts may award punitive damages to deter similar conduct.
Additional Costs: Funeral expenses, medical bills if the victim survived initially, and in some jurisdictions, the victim's pre-death pain and suffering.
Complex Liability and Strategic Considerations
Aviation accidents rarely result from single causes. Cases may involve claims against airlines, manufacturers, maintenance contractors, airports, or government entities. Each defendant may have different insurance coverage and legal strategies.
Experienced aviation counsel conducts parallel investigations to the NTSB, occasionally uncovering evidence of corporate negligence, design defects, or regulatory violations that official investigations may not emphasize.
At Wisner Baum, we understand that no amount of money can restore your loss, but fair compensation provides financial security for your family's future, acknowledges the value of the life taken, and creates accountability that can prevent similar incidents in the future.
What Are the Most Common Causes of Airplane Accidents?
At Wisner Baum, our years of experience handling plane crashes and other mass disasters have provided our team with a comprehensive understanding of how to effectively investigate and prepare these cases for trial or settlement.
In our experience, the most common aviation accident causes include:
- Maintenance Negligence: It is becoming increasingly common for airlines to outsource aircraft maintenance to third parties in the U.S. and abroad. By doing this, airlines are exposing air travelers to needless risk, all in the name of boosting profits by keeping costs down.
- Design or Manufacturing Defects: Design defects or manufacturing defects that cause or contribute to an aviation accident can serve as the foundation for product liability lawsuits against the companies responsible. Defective design is when an aircraft—or a component part—is manufactured correctly, but something about the design made the aircraft or component part unreasonably dangerous. A design defect can affect an entire product line, not just a single product. A manufacturing defect is when an aircraft or one of its components is manufactured differently than its original design, or specifications, and becomes unreasonably dangerous. Manufacturing defects can affect an entire line of products or a single product.
- Flight Crew Negligence: Crew negligence can easily lead to a U.S. airline accident. If the pilot is inattentive or not properly trained in operating the aircraft, the crew skips critical safety checks, or the flight attendants fail to complete their duties, anything from in-flight injuries, runway crashes, or even devastating mid-air plane crashes can be the result.
- Corporate Negligence: Airline pilots and crew members are increasingly pushed by corporate policies to fly with the minimum amount of fuel to cut down on costs, or make unsafe landings to avoid delays and canceled flights. These cost cutting measures have an effect on safety and needlessly open the door to a potential U.S. airline accident.
How Many Planes Crash a Year?
The NTSB investigates approximately 1,200-1,400 aviation accidents annually in the United States, but the vast majority involve small private aircraft, not commercial airlines. Of these, roughly 200-250 result in fatalities.
For commercial passenger airlines operating under Part 121 regulations—the flights most people take—fatal accidents in the U.S. are extraordinarily rare. Prior to the midair collision between American Airlines Flight 5342 and a military helicopter at Reagan National Airport on January 29, 2025, there had been no fatal U.S. commercial airline crashes since 2009.
According to data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), there are on average 5-10 fatal commercial aviation disasters worldwide each year, resulting in 144-244 deaths.
Who Can Be Held Liable for Aviation Accidents?
We meticulously investigate the causes of each accident and pursue accountability against the:
- Airline
- Aviation companies
- Airport
- Manufacturer
- And other negligent parties
When we take on cases stemming from plane accidents, our experienced Los Angeles airplane accident attorneys will be there to help with urgent matters, to manage and conduct an in-depth investigation, to protect our clients’ rights and to obtain full and just compensation.
We also seek non-traditional remedies where appropriate. For example, in 2003 we organized the first official public airline apology in history. At a ceremony in Charlotte, N.C., the responsible airline issued the surviving family members a public apology as part of a settlement agreement.
Taking On Major Airlines for Nearly 40 Years
At Wisner Baum, we handle cases against all major airlines, including:
Our firm has a successful track record handling U.S. airline accident cases like:
JetBlue Flight 1416 In-Flight Incident: On September 18, 2014, JetBlue Flight 1416 departed from Long Beach Airport with 147 people onboard. Roughly 20 minutes into the Austin, Texas-bound flight, passengers heard a loud bang and smoke began to billow throughout the passenger cabin as the plane was over the Pacific Ocean. Many passengers went into a panic.
A few struggled to breathe. One passenger would later tell CNN that oxygen masks never fell from the ceiling, so flight attendants had to manually hand them out. Many suffered severe stress and fear of impending crash and death. Dozens of passengers forced to endure this in-flight emergency, retained Wisner Baum to represent them in their JetBlue lawsuit.
Continental Connection / Colgan Air Flight 3407 Crash: Our firm was retained to handle a wrongful death case that arose from the February 12, 2009 crash. Our lawsuit alleged that Flight 3407 flew into icing conditions even though the aircraft was equipped with ineffective de-icing equipment. We argued that defective aircraft design was a significant cause of this U.S. airline accident that took the lives of 50 people when it crashed into a house near Buffalo, New York.
Southwest Airlines Flight 1248 Crash: On December 8, 2005 Southwest Airlines Flight 1248 headed for Chicago Midway International Airport after a successful take off from Baltimore. However, the flight encountered a snow storm and the plane was delayed for 35 minutes before attempting to land on a runway that would turn out to be too small to stop the plane efficiently. The plane skidded off the runway and crashed through the airport barrier, eventually stopping on South Central Ave, killing a young child in a parked car on the street. Wisner Baum represented six of the injured passengers.
US Airways Express/Air Midwest Flight 5481 Crash: Air Midwest Flight 5481 taking off from Charlotte-Douglas International Airport crashed shortly after takeoff on January 8, 2003. The Raytheon Beechcraft was destroyed by impact forces and a fire that resulted from the plane impacting a nearby building. The NTSB determined several contributing factors to the cause of the accident, including the oversight of Air Midwest’s maintenance and procedures, the weight the plane was carrying and the incorrect rigging of the elevator control system. Twenty-one fatalities resulted in the crash.
How Aviation Accident Investigations Work
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is the government agency that investigates aviation accidents. When notified of an aviation accident, the agency deploys a "Go Team" of investigators to the crash site within hours to secure evidence, interview witnesses, and begin analyzing the sequence of events. The NTSB operates under what's called the "party system," which designates aircraft manufacturers, airlines, engine companies, and other industry stakeholders as official participants in the investigation process. These parties help examine wreckage, analyze flight data, and even assist in writing factual reports—though only the NTSB determines the final "probable cause" of the accident. The investigation culminates in a comprehensive report that includes factual findings, analysis, and a probable cause determination aimed at preventing future accidents.
While the NTSB conducts thorough investigations of aviation accidents, experienced aviation attorneys conduct parallel independent investigations that often reveal critical facts the NTSB may underemphasize. As attorneys, we have seen cases where the NTSB attributes "pilot error" to incidents that may actually involve mechanical failures or design defects that the investigation may obscure. Manufacturing representatives participate in evidence handling, component teardowns, and even help draft factual reports, while victims' families and their legal experts are excluded from the process.
That’s why experienced aviation attorneys are vital to the process of uncovering what really happened. At Wisner Baum, our investigations fill this critical gap by focusing on liability and accountability rather than just probable cause. Our aviation attorneys work with independent experts, aerospace engineers, and accident reconstruction specialists who have no financial stake in protecting industry interests. These investigations often employ discovery tools unavailable to the NTSB, including subpoena power, depositions under oath, and access to internal company documents that reveal corporate decision-making patterns.
Legal investigations also examine factors the NTSB typically doesn't pursue, such as corporate cost-cutting measures, inadequate training programs, rushed maintenance schedules, and systemic safety culture problems that may have contributed to the accident. Perhaps most importantly, legal investigations operate under different time pressures and objectives than the NTSB. Attorney investigations can uncover evidence of negligence, design defects, or regulatory violations that may be mentioned only briefly in NTSB reports but become central to proving liability in court. The discovery process in aviation litigation has repeatedly exposed critical safety issues first identified by independent legal investigations rather than government agencies, ultimately leading to design changes, improved maintenance protocols, and enhanced pilot training programs that benefit all air travelers.
Why Choose Wisner Baum as Your Aviation Accident Lawyers?
Our aviation accident lawyers in Los Angeles and across California are ready to fight for your rights—no matter how complex the case, and no matter the opponent. At Wisner Baum, our attorneys have:
- 40 years of experience litigating nearly every category of aviation accident.
- Secured half a billion dollars for our aviation clients.
- Recognized authority in aviation litigation—trusted across California and beyond.
- Technical legal experience presented in clear, accessible language for all families.
- Tenacious, client-focused service through investigations.
- Comprehensive legal representation from the intake process to resolution; we are with you every step of the way.
If you or someone in your family was harmed in an aircraft accident, contact our aviation attorneys today.
