(NEXSTAR) – Passengers on Alaska Airlines flight 1282 were provided with a cash payment after a door plug blew off the aircraft last week.
The money was provided in addition to a refund, Alaska Airlines confirmed in a statement shared with Nexstar.
“Alaska Airlines provided a full refund to each guest on Flight 1282,” a spokesperson for the carrier wrote in an emailed statement. “As an immediate gesture of care, within the first 24 hours, we also provided a $1,500 cash payment to cover any incidental expenses to ensure their immediate needs were taken care of. The payment was provided without any stipulations or conditions.”
Passengers will also have “access to mental health resources and counseling sessions from Empathia, our incident response and family assistance partner,” the spokesperson wrote.
On Jan. 5, Alaska Airlines flight 1282 took off for Ontario, California, from Portland International Airport (PDX). The plane, a Boeing 737 MAX 9, was forced to make an emergency landing back at PXD after a door plug — a panel used to cover an optional emergency exit — blew off the fuselage at 16,000 feet.
No major injuries were reported.
The Federal Aviation Administration soon grounded all Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft equipped with the door plugs. The FAA has since launched an investigation into Boeing, to determine if the manufacturing of the jetliners complies with “the high safety standards they’re legally accountable to meet,” the FAA wrote in a statement shared Thursday.
The FAA also instructed Boeing to identify the cause of the problem, giving the company a 10-day deadline.
In the meantime, a Seattle law firm has filed a class-action lawsuit against Boeing on behalf of some of the passengers, who “feared they would not survive the flight,” according to the lawsuit.
“Unfortunately, although everyone is glad that the blow-out occurred while the crew could still manage to land the aircraft safely, this nightmare experience has caused economic, physical and ongoing emotional consequences that have understandably deeply affected our clients, and is one more disturbing black mark on the troubled 737-MAX series aircraft,” Daniel Laurence, an attorney representing the passengers, wrote in a statement shared with Nexstar.
A spokesperson for Boeing declined to comment on the lawsuit.
