Monday, Feb. 15, 1937
Perils of the Air
Flying one day from Washington to Cleveland, a Pennsylvania Airliner ran into a patch of bumpy air near Harper's Ferry, Va. On one bump the ship fell about 300 ft., pitching two of the passengers against the roof so violently that they had to be taken back to Washington at once and sent to a hospital. Last week these two--George P. Kimmel, Washington patent lawyer, and Homer J. Byrd, Illinois State Superintendent of Registration & Education--were in court demanding $200,000 damages from the airline.* They contended the pilot should have warned them to fasten their safety belts. The airline retorted that the weather had not been bad, that bumps often come without warning, that the accident was unavoidable.
In the first decision of its kind ever rendered, District of Columbia Supreme Court last week denied the suits, declared that passengers assume "the risks necessarily incident to traveling in the air, known as perils of the air."f
*Now Pennsylvania-Central Air Lines, fin accidents where the airline was proved to be at fault, passengers have collected damages.
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