Southwest Wrong Airport Landing Lawsuit Seeks Exactly $74,999.99

BRANSON, MO — Seeking a judgment of exactly $74,999.99 and not $75,0000 may seem peculiar, but there’s a logical reason a Wisconsin man is asking for that precise amount in a lawsuit against lawsuit Southwest airlines for landing at the wrong airport — one with a short runway that caused the 124 passengers to bounce around during the landing.

Troy Haines was flying to Branson, Missouri, in 2014 when the pilot landed at the M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport instead of Branson Airport, which is located about 6 miles away. The runway was shorter, and the jet stopped 300 feet short of the runway, which has a steep drop off.

The pilots of Southwest Flight 4013 out of Chicago told the National Transportation Safety Bureau used a visual approach at night and mistook the bright runway lights at the smaller airport for the lights at Branson Airport.

Here's a pilot's view of the mistake:

It was a miserably rough landing, according to the lawsuit, and Haines has since suffered “severe mental anguish, fear and anxiety, including a panic attack which caused him to be removed from another airliner prior to takeoff.”

“The flight crew applied the speedbrake, thrust reversers, and autobrakes, causing the passengers on flight #4013 to slam forward and bounce around in their seats, causing the overhead bins to unlatch throwing their contents throughout the cabin, and the cabin to fill with smoke,” the lawsuit states.

Haines “was immediately struck with fear and anxiety over potentially crashing,” according to the lawsuit. He was so traumatized, it said, that he was unable to fly for work-related travel and had to take a different job at a “substantially diminished salary.”

Southwest reached out individually to each of the 124 passengers on board directly after the flight with a compensation offer, the Associated Press reported.

The reason Haines is asking for “damages in the amount of $74,999.99 and nothing more” is simple. A lawsuit asking for a $75,000 or greater judgment could have been moved to federal courts. That’s according to Inc. editor Bill Murray Jr., who reports he was intrigued by the curious judgment request and did some research.

Paul Geller, an experienced civil litigator who is not involved in the case, told Murray it was clear Haines “wants to be in state court and is therefore staying under the monetary threshold for removal to federal court.”

“While I don't necessarily ascribe to it, there is a general overlay in litigation that plaintiffs want to be in state court, and defendants try to find any way to get to federal court (through removal, where permissible)," said Geller, a partner at New York-based Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, who is not involved in this case.

After a pair of mixups — a Boeing 747 jumbo jet carrying cargo landed at a small Wichita, Kansas, airport instead of the Air Force Base a few miles away in 2013 — the NTSB recommended to the Federal Aviation Administration that “controllers withhold landing clearance until the aircraft has passed all other airports that may be confused with the destination airport.”

“While the controllers should have provided the locations of the airports that could potentially cause confusion and the pilots should have more closely monitored their flightpaths relative to the intended destination airports, these events suggest that the issuance of a landing clearance to the pilot far away from the destination airport and with the destination airport in close proximity to other airports exacerbates the potential for human error,” the NTSB said in its report.
Below, watch the large Southwest jet take off from the short runway:

The Associated Press contributed reporting.

Photo via Shutterstock