“Our case is all about safety issues at Boeing, and this slide is literally right in front of my house.”
Slide on Over
Suing a company is one thing — but finding a piece of its faulty wares outside your house is another entirely.
Jake Bissell-Linsk, whose firm is involved in a lawsuit against Boeing, told the New York Post that he was shocked to look out the window of his oceanfront home in Queens to see an inflatable slide floating in the water.
“We are right on the beach,” the lawyer marveled, “and I saw it was sitting on the breakers.”
A partner at the Labaton Keller Sucharow law firm that’s currently suing Boeing over the Alaska Airlines fiasco in which one of its fuselages fell off mid-flight, the lawyer was as surprised as anyone at the sight.
“Our case is all about safety issues at Boeing,” Bissell-Linsk said, “and this slide is literally right in front of my house.”
The yellow-colored piece trapped yards from the attorney’s front door was, as it turns out, the same emergency slide that a few days prior fell off a Delta-operated 767 jetliner. Bound for Los Angeles from nearby JFK Airport, the flight was forced to turn back around and deplane just an hour after takeoff after the slide fell off.
Picture Perfect
Bissell-Linsk did what anyone else would do in such a situation — he went down to the beach to snap some pictures. The slide, which is used for passengers to exit the plane in case of an emergency landing, appeared to be largely intact.
“I didn’t want to touch it,” Bissell-Linsk told the tabloid, “but I got close enough to get a close look at it.”
As it turns out, the attorney wasn’t the only person who saw the chute in the surf. A neighbor also saw it and tried to call the Federal Aviation Administration’s hotline for such incidents, but because it was a Sunday, it was closed. That neighbor apparently then called Delta, and hours after the slide washed up, a truck came to collect it.
Delta confirmed to the Post that it had retrieved the slide and that it will “fully cooperate with all relevant investigations” when the newspaper contacted it for comment. As of now, though, it’s unclear whose custody it’s in.
As for Bissell-Linsk, he said his firm is weighing whether the incredible coincidence will be part of its case against Boeing, which is happening alongside several legal probes in the aftermath of the Alaska Airlines blowout as it becomes clearer and clearer that there are some serious issues in the way it makes its jets.
“We haven’t decided if the slide is relevant to our case,” the lawyer said.
More on Boeing: New Boeing Whistleblower Says 787 Fuselages Are Improperly Fastened Together, Could Break Apart
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