SEATTLE — The family of a worker who was fatally injured when a seat-belt air bag replacement inflated explosively is suing Boeing and a supplier.
Kenneth Otto suffered massive head injuries while he was installing the unit on a 777 at Boeing’s Everett factory. He died a month later. The Seattle Times reported the lawsuit was filed Wednesday in King County Superior Court.
The accident occurred when workers were called to deal with an air bag that had discharged for no reason.
Otto’s family and Christopher Gee, who was helping Otto, are suing Boeing and the air-bag manufacturer, AmSafe, of Phoenix.
The suit says the plane’s buyer discovered a discharged air bag in a business-class seat as it prepared to take delivery of the jet. The lawsuit claims Boeing and AmSafe did not conduct an examination to find out why it malfunctioned.
A Boeing spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Airbags are installed in thousands of airplane seats to meet federal safety requirements that passengers be able to withstand an impact equal to 16 times the force of gravity. Airbags are needed on “difficult-to-certify seat placements,” such as unconventional seats in first or business classes and bulkhead-row seats, according to Amsafe’s website.
Earlier this year, the state Department of Labor and Industries cited four Boeing suppliers, though neither Boeing nor Amsafe, for workplace safety violations discovered during the department’s investigation into the fatal accident at Paine Field. The proposed citation penalties ranged from $200 to $11,000.
L&I cited Jamco America for three violations. The serious ones were a lack of procedures to protect employees while working on airbags installed in first-class and business-class airplane seats.
In November, Otto, a Jamco mechanic then 49, was working on a faulty airbag in a 777 on the flight line at Paine Field when the airbag went off, violently hitting his face. He was flown by helicopter to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he died Dec. 7.
Gee, 25, a worker with Vartan Product Support, was treated on site, taken to a local hospital and released, according to Boeing.
Vartan Product Support, which is part of the German interiors firm Vartan Aviation Group, was also cited by L&I for not properly warning the worker of the potential danger. The company corrected the issue during L&I’s inspection, the agency said. While the violation is considered serious by L&I, the penalty was $200.
Two other companies were also cited by the state Department of Labor and Industries: B/E Aerospace and Zodiac Seats U.S. Zodiac was formerly known as Weber Aircraft. Zodiac Seats U.S. is a subsidiary of Zodiac Aerospace, which is based in France.
They were not involved in the November accident but they do similar work, and L&I routinely inspects such companies following an accident.
Airplane seats are made by a handful of aerospace suppliers. Boeing’s customers buy the seats from the suppliers. Boeing mechanics install the seats, but contractors often deal with problems identified before the airplane is delivered.
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