National carrier LOT Polish Airlines is suing Boeing at a US court over design flaws in its 737 MAX aircraft that led to them being grounded for two years. The airline is reportedly seeking at least 1 billion zloty ($252 million) compensation.
The news, first reported by the Polish Press Agency (PAP), was confirmed yesterday by LOT’s spokesman, Krzysztof Moczulski. According to PAP, the lawsuit follows months of unsuccessful efforts to negotiate a settlement.
The case relates to design flaws in the 737 MAX that led to two accidents in which almost 350 people died. As a result, the aircraft was grounded worldwide between March 2019 and November 2020, and only permitted to return to European skies in January 2021.
Earlier this year, Boeing paid over $2.5 billion to settle a charge of criminal conspiracy to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration. The firm admitted to criminal misconduct for misleading regulators about the safety of the 737 MAX.
LOT owns five of the aircraft and was not finally able to restart their operation until March this year, following the modifications required by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. It also carried out its own additional inspections and test flights and the airline’s crew underwent additional training using simulators in the UK.
“We did everything to make our passengers feel as comfortable as possible on board these aircraft,” said LOT’s chief operating officer, Maciej Wilk, ahead of the relaunch.
Apart from confirming to PAP and Reuters that it has filed a lawsuit against Boeing in Seattle, where the US firm is based, LOT has not revealed any further details of the case.
According to PAP, LOT argues that the grounding of its 737 MAX generated additional costs by making it necessary to urgently lease replacements and because using older aircraft led to higher airport charges relating to, for example, increased noise emissions.
Last month, a judge in Delaware allowed a case to proceed in which shareholders are seeking to sue Boeing’s directors for “ignoring a red flag” after the first 737 MAX crash and “publicly lying about if and how it monitored…safety”.
Main image credit: Colin Cooke Photo/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
