Northwest To Pay $7.1M Settlement

Wednesday, January 10th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

EAGAN, Minn. (AP) â€” Northwest Airlines has agreed to pay a total of $7.1 million to more than 7,000 passengers forced to wait for hours on grounded airplanes at the Detroit airport during a storm in 1999.

The airline admitted no wrongdoing in settling the class-action lawsuit on Tuesday.

``I believe this settlement will encourage all airlines to be careful about the rights of airline passengers in the future,'' said Lawrence S. Charfoos, the passengers' attorney.

A Circuit Court has given preliminary approval to the settlement and will hold a final hearing April 24.

The passengers will receive 70 percent of the settlement, or just under $5 million. The remainder will cover court costs and fees of the six law firms that represented passengers, Charfoos said.

Payments to individual passengers will be at three levels, depending on the time they waited aboard planes: 2 1/2 to five hours, five to eight hours and more than eight hours, he said.

A meeting will be held with class members before the final hearing to explain the settlement, Charfoos added.

About 30 Northwest planes were stranded on snow-covered taxiways and tarmacs as a storm pounded the Midwest on Jan. 3, 1999. Passengers waited up to 11 hours on board and in some cases were subjected to overflowing toilets and a lack of food.

Northwest, the nation's fourth-largest airline, has since changed some of its emergency procedures. It now has a policy that says passengers must not be stuck on grounded planes for more than three hours.