6PR – Latam Flight LA800 – 13th March 2024 [Audio]

Speaker 1 (00:00):
… with Millsy and Karl on 6PR.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Now if you’re on a plane and it just drops out of the sky, thankfully that was the case and it got corrected. But what about the case where the door flies off?

Speaker 3 (00:11):
What do you mean fly?

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Is it cut the mustard to say, “Look, here’s a food voucher. Go and buy yourself a hot meal?” Is that enough compensation for injuries, et cetera?

(00:21):
Well, according to Peter Carter, the director of Carter Capner Law, he has actually been involved with this, with a flight from Singapore to Perth [00:00:30] in 2008.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
That was the one the mouse was on.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
That’s right.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
So I’d be keen to see whether there’ll be a class action, if you like, against the airline for what happened recently.

(00:39):
Peter, good morning to you.

Peter Carter (00:41):
Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Now you actually have a pilot’s license. Have I got that right?

Peter Carter (00:45):
Yes, I’m a private pilot.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Right. So first up, the pilot that did what he did this week, pretty smart thinker to be able to get it out of the sky, or keep it in the sky, I should say.

Peter Carter (00:58):
Well, I think the air kept it up and [00:01:00] he arrested the fall. So thankfully, he regained control within sufficient time to be able to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Pete, it said that he lost the instruments in this particular case.

(01:11):
It was unlike, I believe, the case back in 2007, which I know that you’re well and truly aware of over our part of the world here, in that the pilot actually turned the instrumentation off himself and rebooted the plane, I believe in that instance. But how would you lose your instruments? Do you have any idea?

Peter Carter (01:30):
[00:01:30] Well, look, it’s an exceedingly rare situation. If he lost the instruments, he also lost some form of control or some form of control dropped out. The engines kept running so he didn’t lose them.

(01:42):
But the fault in 2008 was a component supplied by Northrop Grumman called an ADIRU. I can’t remember exactly what that stands for, but that caused the aircraft to dive. People became weightless in the cabin [00:02:00] if they weren’t secured, crashing into the ceiling, then crashing heavily to the floor of the cabin.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
So Flight LA 800, which is the LATAM Airlines flight, will you be trying to get a class action for the passengers on board? And what would be the kind of compensation someone could expect if they’re involved with an incident like that?

Peter Carter (02:20):
Yeah. Look, we are investigating claims for individual passengers. It doesn’t have to be a class action. This might be better suited to individual [00:02:30] claims like we did in QF72.

(02:35):
The compensation can range up to… It depends on the extent of injury. In QF72, there were spinal injuries, millions of dollars. In this case, there might well be some people who are injured to that effect, but there will also be a whole range of injuries. So compensation from 50,000 to potentially multimillion dollars, depending always on the extent [00:03:00] of proven loss and how it affects people going forward, how they can continue to work. Some people with serious injuries can’t work the way they used to before. So that’s how compensation is calculated.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
So Pete, what about those that are mentally affected, mate? I used to work in the Commonwealth Bank and we had bank robbers come in with guns and there was a couple of the staff that they just couldn’t come back to work because they were mentally affected, whilst physically, they weren’t injured at all.

Peter Carter (03:26):
Well, that’s a bit tricky in aircraft [00:03:30] cases. We can recover for that, but not against the airline usually because of the restrictions of the international convention that applies. It applies compensations for bodily injury against the airline, but against Boeing or whoever, Northrop or whoever else it was that supplied the instrumentation or component that failed, caused it to dive that type of compensation is available, yes, for the mental trauma.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
And Peter one final one, [00:04:00] when you sign on to buy a ticket, there’s all these terms and conditions, which no one ever reads. Does that protect the airline?

Peter Carter (04:07):
Well, it protects the airline, but there is an international convention. All the airlines are bound by that. So no, it doesn’t give them any outs for what occurred in this instance. There will be significant compensation payable. But it’s early days and it just depends on how badly people, each person, one by one is injured.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Right, okay. Well, [00:04:30] we’ll be intriguing to follow what happens. And Peter, we appreciate your expertise this morning.

Peter Carter (04:35):
Thank you very much. All the best.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Peter Carter, the director of Carter Capner Law, and he was involved with that Perth flight from Singapore back in 2008.

(04:44):
And he’s also well-known in regards to the aviation sector. So unusual to have a lawyer who knows aviation like the back of their hand, such as Peter. Intriguing times.