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Flight Attendant Injured During Plane’s ‘Violent Drop’ Sues Airline

Laura Lanigan accused the plane’s pilots of flying too close to a storm cloud.

A British Airways flight attendant who dislocated her shoulder and fractured her knee when the plane experienced a “violent drop” due to air turbulence is suing the airline. Laura Lanigan, 56, was in the galley of a Boeing 777 toward the end of a nine-hour flight from London Heathrow to Mumbai, India, when the pilots flew too close to a storm cloud, she alleges. The flight path triggered a “sudden and severe bout of turbulence,” and she was thrown into the air, causing injuries to the tune of £72,500, or about $97,400. According to Lanigan, the pilots should have seen a large, dark storm cloud nearby and either taken steps to stay 20 miles away from it or instructed the crew to wear their seatbelts. The airline’s lawyers have argued a storm cloud wasn’t visible from the plane and didn’t appear on the weather radar. An operating officer on the flight deck had reported only “fluffy white clouds.”