Originally Posted by
layman54
"I will be neither surprised nor shocked if the lawsuits also name American Airlines, which has no protection obviously under the FTCA. It didn't do anything wrong ..."
Well presumably any lawsuit naming American Airlines will have to allege they did something to incur liability. The only such theory I can come up with is that the jet pilot should have refused the rerouting to runway 33 because he should have known that would increase the jet's exposure to reckless helicopters. Which is sort of blaming the pilots squared. Is that what you want to go with or do you have an alternative way of dragging American Airlines into this? Of course American Airlines is already involved in that they have a FTCA claim against the government for at least the value of their plane.
If my post is open to misinterpretation, then that's on me. In other words it's not a matter of affirmatively wanting to "drag" the airline into a lawsuit in which it would not be a legitimate party. Rather, in the exercise of forecasting the inevitable lawsuits (or at least applying some analytic foresight), and trying to think like counsel for the victims' families, a non-frivolous claim against the airline could open the case in total to claims for punitive damages. As you note, although in the role of claimant, for its hull loss the airline would likely be involved anyway. And so would its insurers.
Beyond that, and because my referring to making the airline a party is not meant to be trivial, the underlying idea is that establishment of a fund and claims process would be one of two main components of an approach to resolving the matter. The other component would have to be some - and I realize this is perhaps too much magical thinking - hard-truth reform and rework of airspace configuration and usage rules, nationwide. I don't wish to preach or pontificate, but this catastrophic accident happened after the Safety Call to Action, after the National Airspace Safety Team report, after the intense public, political, and international attention to and focus upon FAA in the aftermath of Lion Air and Ethiopian. So the underlying and motivating objective is to follow and apply former U.S. Amb. to Japan Rahm Emanuel's aphorism, "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste."
And yes, though it's hopefully non-frivolous, and despite it being a placeholder claim rather than an entirely direct claim, telling ATC "Unable" in re: Rwy 3-3 given the known airspace complications would appear the most viable option.