Passengers stranded in '99 blizzard to get checks
4/30/01

Nearly 4,000 Northwest Airlines passengers who were stranded for as many as 11 hours on aircraft parked on Detroit Metropolitan Airport runways and taxiways during a January 1999 blizzard will receive checks for $1,000, $1,400 or $2,000 each.

The $7.152 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed by the passengers was approved Tuesday by Wayne County Circuit Judge Daphne Means Curtis, closing the books on an incident attorney Lawrence Charfoos said has changed the way the aviation industry operates.

"Northwest has done an excellent job to make sure that this will never happen again," said Charfoos, who along with attorney Geoffrey Fieger were co-lead attorneys representing the passengers. "This is one instance where civil litigation really worked because it changed an industry's business practice."

Return to the Fieger Current Case page