Arizona Aviation Accident Lawyer

Gage Mathers Law Group is an elite aviation accident law firm in Arizona. For over 50 years, we have successfully handled aviation cases for our clients. Whether the accident involves a helicopter or airplane, our lawyers are prepared to take on your claim for catastrophic injuries or the wrongful death of a loved one.

Our Firm Has the Best Arizona Airplane and Helicopter Accident Lawyers

Our firm has handled nearly every kind of aviation accident case in Arizona, including several fatal airplane accidents. We are well equipped to handle complex cases involving:

• Small aircraft, like:
  • Cessna prop planes,
  • Biplanes (airshow planes),
  • Crop Dusters,
  • Sightseeing helicopters, and
  • Air ambulance helicopters/airplanes;
• Large airplanes, like:
  • Commercial airliners (Airbus A320 to 787 Dreamliner model aircraft),
  • Private jets,
  • Charter planes,
  • General aviation and training aircraft, and
  • Skydiving accidents.

Plane and helicopter crashes trigger an intense investigation

Helicopter crashes are high profile accidents because of their devastating nature.  Helicopters were not designed to crash.  When they do, the occupants are usually killed or suffer catastrophic injuries, like paralysis and burn trauma.  Medical bills will exceed tens of thousands of dollars, and may even rise into the millions.

It is important to get a helicopter crash lawyer involved immediately to ensure evidence is properly preserved and analyzed.  Many witnesses and participants will need to be interviewed, and potentially testimony preserved.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), local authorities, and various insurance companies will all be involved. These investigations are expensive, confusing, and lengthy.

Gage Mathers will help you and your family navigate the investigation process. We will also begin our own investigation to help determine the cause of the crash. Commonly these are pilot error or mechanical failure.

Personal Injury Law Firm for Aviation Accidents

If you, or someone you love, has suffered as a result of an aviation accident let us help.  Contact Gage Mathers and we will help you protect your legal rights during this difficult and confusing time.

Grand Canyon Helicopter Tour Considerations

The steep, jagged cliffs in the Grand Canyon can cause sudden, unpredictable bursts of wind to occur. These bursts can be lethal because they are strong enough to knock a helicopter off its course.

Many restrictions apply to helicopter sightseeing tours in the Grand Canyon. Nonetheless, there are tours offered by unregulated tour companies that carry fly passengers around the park without violating FAA rules. Hundreds of tours are running a day in and around the Grand Canyon, so enforcement of rules and regulations is a struggle for the agency.

The lack of enforcement means dangerous conditions still exist for tourists who either don’t know any better or are misled by a tour company. Always check to see if a tour provider is certified as an FAA Part 135 Air Carrier and check the company for past accidents using the FAA Accident & Incident Data report or the NTSB’s Aviation Accident Database.

We are not suggesting you avoid these tours. They can awe-inspiring and lots of fun. Just like tours of Monument Valley and other parts of Arizona. Just make sure you have important information before booking a tour.

Call the Best Arizona Aviation Accident Lawyers Today

 If you, or someone you love, has suffered as a result of an aviation accident let us help.  Contact Gage Mathers and we will help you protect your legal rights during this difficult and confusing time.

Airline Liability Considerations

Contract of Carriage

The contract of carriage is a binding agreement (evidenced usually by an air waybill, bill of lading, or passenger ticket) that contains conditions of carriage spelling out the obligations and rights of the carrier and passenger. The carrier undertakes to deliver goods/passengers from a named place of departure to a named destination for freight/fare. This contract addresses issues associated specifically with what is being carried out and how the liability and compensation for damage or injury to (or loss of) the goods/passengers is assessed, apportioned, and paid. In airlines, cruise ships, and other passenger-transport industries, it also contains the carrier’s policy regarding baggage, bumping, cancellation and delays, claims, reservations, ticket validity, and other issues.

Airline Liability

The laws governing an airline’s liability for injuries to passengers varies depending upon whether the passenger is travelling on a purely domestic or an international (or partly international) ticket. This is a legal relationship with one of the highest degree of care, existing between airlines and passengers (from the time the passenger begins the boarding process until they reach a safe place within the destination terminal), which is governed by unique bodies of law.

Airline Liability to Domestic Passengers

Domestic passengers are airline passengers whose ticket shows an origin and destination within the United States and whose planned routing does not include any stops outside the US.

Common carriers are your typical airlines, which represent to the public, either in writing (e.g. advertising) or by its course of conduct, that it will:

1. Carry for hire,
2. At a uniform rate,
3. Available to all persons as long as there remains unused capacity on the aircraft.

Under common law, common carriers have been held to exercise the highest degree of care to avoid injuring a passenger. This highest degree of care standard requires the airline and its employees to exercise the greatest degree of human care and foresight possible to ensure the passengers’ safe travel. This duty is more exacting than the ordinary degree of care that usually applies to the average person driving a car. Note: private and contract carriage is governed by the ordinary degree of care since it is not open to the public.

Once the airplane reaches the destination terminal, the airline owes the passenger only an ordinary degree of care.

Airline Liability for International Passengers

International passengers are passengers whose ticket shows either:

1. Origin in one country and a destination in another country, or
2. Origin and destination in the same country but a planned intermediate stop in a different country (planned = printed on ticket, not emergency stop).

The Warsaw Convention

Considered a landmark international treaty when established in 1929, the Warsaw Convention established a framework of internationally uniform law, including:

• Jurisdiction (in what nation’s courts may a lawsuit be brought),
• Choice of law (what law governs the crash),
• Statute of limitation (when must the suit be filed or forever barred) (i.e., within 2 years from date of conclusion of trip or its intended conclusion).

International passengers can choose between 4 possible nations in which to bring a lawsuit for injury:

• Nation of domicile of the airline,
• Nation in which airline has its principal place of business,
• Nation in which the ticket was bought from the airline or from a travel agent, or
• Nation that is the passenger’s destination.

The Warsaw Convention also created a uniformity of terms and conditions, not only within airlines but also among all transportation modes. In an effort to promote safety, the convention imposes strict liability on international airlines for passenger injury or death and substantially limits defenses. To counterbalance strict liability and protect international airlines from catastrophic loss in the event of a crash, the convention promoted the availability of liability insurance to international airlines.

Punitive damages under the Warsaw Convention applied if the accident was caused by the willful misconduct of the airline (or employees acting within the scope of their employment). In such cases, the airline remained strictly liable for the passenger’s injury or death, but without the dollar limit.

The Montreal Convention

The Montreal Convention, in 1965, modified some aspects of the Warsaw Convention.  Airlines agreed to increase the ceiling on liability for injury or death of a passenger to $75,000 for those international flights “touching” the US (originating in, terminating in, or with a planned stop in the US). There were also changes to liability for international cargo.

Further changes to the convention became effective in 2003. Principal changes for personal injury, where strict liability still applies, modified the limits of liability. The airline is liable for the first 100,000 SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) of provable compensatory damages adjusted for inflation where the SDRs are valued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). There is no artificial limit on the amount of recoverable compensatory damages in excess of 100,000 SDRs, unless the airline proves itself free from any fault in causing the accident.

Punitive damages were specifically precluded.

Airlines were now liable for delaying passengers and their baggage, to limits of 4,150 SDRs per passenger for passenger delay, and 1,000 SDRs per passenger for baggage delay. For code-sharing flights, the passenger may recover from either airline operating the flight or the airline whose code appears on the ticket. Where required by national law, the airline now is obliged to make advance payments to meet the immediate economic needs of victims and their families.

One useful change was that a passenger’s principal and permanent nation of residence at the time of the accident is added to Warsaw’s list as a 5th place where a lawsuit may be brought, providing that the airline has a place of business there.