An Endeavor Air flight attendant traveling on Flight 4819, which crash landed in Toronto in February, has sued Delta Air Lines and subsidiary Endeavor, alleging incident was caused by safety negligence and an “inexperienced flight crew.”
The Endeavor flight attendant, Vanessa Miles, filed the suit this week in Michigan federal court. She was not working on the flight, but traveling as a passenger to get in position for her next assignment.
She alleges Atlanta-based Delta and its regional carrier subsidiary Endeavor “cut corners on safety by rushing pilots through training programs” and “knowingly assigning an inexperienced and inadequately trained pilot to operate the flight.”
She also accuses the airlines of failing to properly train the crew on emergency evacuation procedures, maintain the aircraft’s landing gear and provide timely emergency response to survivors.
In a statement, a Delta spokesperson said the airline “declines to comment on pending litigation and continues to fully support the Transportation Safety Board of Canada’s ongoing investigation.”
The airline has previously defended the flight two crew members’ experience level and training record.
Miles’ lawsuit joins others already filed by passengers on the flight, which was traveling from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Toronto when it crashed landed and ended upside down on the runway.
It was flying under the Delta Connection regional brand but was operated by Endeavor Air, which is a wholly owned Delta subsidiary.
According to a video posted by the Association of Flight Attendants at Endeavor, the union gave Miles, as well as the two flight attendants working the trip and one who was also traveling that day, awards for “heroism” in assisting with the evacuation.
In her complaint, Miles said she was rendered “temporarily unconscious while hanging upside down from her seat belt in the inverted aircraft” after the plane crashed and rolled over.
She said she was soaked in jet fuel and surrounded by smoke, and once she regained consciousness and unbuckled her seat belt she fell to the inverted aircraft’s ceiling.
Because the emergency slides failed to deploy, she said she fell 6-7 feet to the ground and then had to stand outside in 15-degree weather for an hour before being transported to the hospital.
Her injuries included a fractured left shoulder, concussion, knee and back injuries, and “psychological trauma,” her complaint states.
According to the Canadian Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary report, the captain of the flight had worked for the airline since 2007. It was his first flight of the day and his first flight in seven days.
The first officer had worked for Endeavor Air since January 2024, the report said. It was her fifth day of a five-day work cycle, and she had flown from Cleveland to Minneapolis before the flight to Toronto.
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