Miami Airline Injury Lawyer

• ✓The first question is whether your flight was international. It sorts everything that follows. Carriage between two countries that have both adopted the Montreal Convention — and a round trip that begins and ends in one country with an agreed stopping place in another — is treaty carriage. The treaty then supplies the standard of liability, the limits, the places you may sue, and the deadline, in place of ordinary state negligence law. A purely domestic flight between two U.S. cities is not treaty carriage and runs on Florida law instead. A great deal of bad advice about airline claims comes from applying one of those frameworks to a passenger who was actually in the other.
• ✓Under the treaty, the carrier is liable for an “accident” — a defined term. Article 17(1) makes the carrier liable for “damage sustained in case of death or bodily injury of a passenger upon condition only that the accident which caused the death or injury took place on board the aircraft or in the course of any of the operations of embarking or disembarking.” Note the reach: embarking and disembarking are inside the rule, so a jet-bridge or boarding injury can be a treaty claim. Under the standard the Supreme Court set in Air France v. Saks, 470 U.S. 392, 405 (1985), liability arises “only if a passenger’s injury is caused by an unexpected or unusual event or happening that is external to the passenger.”
• ✓Article 21 makes the carrier strictly liable up to a set figure — then shifts the burden. The Montreal Convention’s Article 21 has two tiers. In the first, the carrier is strictly liable for proven damages up to 151,880 Special Drawing Rights (SDR) per passenger, the limit in effect since 28 December 2024 — approximately US$202,500 at the time ICAO set it in October 2024. It cannot escape that tier by proving it was careful. Above that figure, Article 21(2) lets the carrier avoid liability only by proving the damage was not due to its negligence or wrongful act or omission, or was due solely to a third party. The printed treaty text still shows the original 1999 figure; the limit is revised every five years under Article 24, and the current one is the number above.
• ✓Article 35 gives two years from the landing — and it does not toll. Suit must be brought within two years from the date of arrival at the destination, the date the aircraft ought to have arrived, or the date on which the carriage stopped. It is treated as a condition precedent and a period of extinguishment rather than an ordinary statute of limitations, which means it is generally not extended by equitable tolling, by a claimant’s minority, or by a discovery rule. The consequence people do not see coming: the clock runs from the flight, not from the injury and not from a death, so a wrongful death case filed within two years of the death can still be too late.
• ✓Article 33 usually lets a South Florida resident sue at home. One of the most common fears about a treaty claim is that it has to be filed in the airline’s country. Article 33 sets out five permitted places: the carrier’s domicile, its principal place of business, the place where the contract was made, the place of destination, and the passenger’s principal and permanent residence, provided the carrier operates services there. For a Miami-Dade or Broward resident injured on a flight in or out of Miami International Airport, more than one of those five will frequently point right back to South Florida.
• ✓On a domestic flight, Florida negligence law applies — with a preemption question attached. No treaty governs a Miami-to-anywhere-in-the-U.S. flight. The claim is ordinary negligence: duty, breach, causation, damages, with the general two-year deadline at Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5). Airlines sometimes invoke the Airline Deregulation Act, 49 U.S.C. § 41713(b)(1), which bars a state from enforcing a provision “related to a price, route, or service of an air carrier.” Courts have generally allowed ordinary personal injury claims to proceed notwithstanding the Airline Deregulation Act, while claims that are really about price, route, or service can be preempted — so how a claim is framed matters.
• ✓Miami International Airport is a county agency, and that changes every number. MIA is operated by the Miami-Dade County Aviation Department. A claim against the airport itself is a claim against a Florida government entity under Fla. Stat. § 768.28: the claim must first be presented in writing to the agency and to the Department of Financial Services, generally within six months (90 days for medical malpractice and wrongful death); damages are capped at $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident under § 768.28(5); and the action itself must be brought within four years under § 768.28(14), two for wrongful death.
• ✓GARA’s 18-year repose is a small-aircraft rule — it generally does not reach an airliner. People who have read about aviation litigation sometimes assume an older aircraft cannot be sued over. The General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994 creates an 18-year statute of repose at § 3(3) of the Act, and it applies to general aviation aircraft with fewer than 20 seats not engaged in scheduled passenger service. A scheduled commercial airliner is outside that definition, so GARA generally does not apply to a commercial airline passenger claim at all. Within its own scope, § 2(a)(2) also creates a rolling clock — a replacement part restarts the 18 years as to that part.

• •Turbulence and sudden altitude changes. Unrestrained passengers and crew are thrown into ceilings, armrests and galley fittings when an aircraft encounters rough air. The FAA’s Aviation Weather Research Program reports that from 2008 through 2022, turbulence accounted for 152 of 420 — 36 percent — of Part 121 accidents, the category covering scheduled commercial service, each of them involving at least one serious injury. The legal questions are usually what the flight crew knew about the conditions, whether the seat belt sign was on, and whether warnings were given in time.
• •Service carts and beverage service. A loaded service cart is heavy, moves in a narrow aisle and is controlled entirely by the crew. Aisle-seat passengers take hand, shoulder, knee and foot injuries from carts that get away from a crew member, roll on an incline, or strike an arm resting in the aisle. Because a crew member is operating the equipment directly, these claims tend to be about the carrier’s own conduct rather than about a condition someone should have discovered.
• •Overhead bins and falling luggage. Bags shift in flight, get overstuffed at boarding, and fall when a bin is opened on descent. Head, neck, shoulder and facial injuries follow. No federal agency publishes a count of overhead-bin injuries — there simply is no dataset — which is worth knowing when a page quotes you a number. The issues are usually whether the bin was overloaded, who loaded it, whether crew secured or checked it, and whether the latch or the bin itself failed.
• •Boarding, jet bridges and the gate. Article 17(1) expressly reaches injuries during “operations of embarking or disembarking,” so a fall on a jet bridge or a stairway to the ramp can be a treaty claim rather than an ordinary premises claim. Steep or wet bridges, unmarked level changes, gaps at the aircraft door, and rushed boarding are the recurring mechanisms. Who controls the bridge — airline, airport, or a ground handler — also decides which set of deadlines you are on.
• •Galleys, lavatories and cabin fixtures. Latches that fail, doors that swing in flight, unsecured galley equipment, loose seat components and broken tray tables cause crush and laceration injuries. A lavatory floor left wet, or a fixture that comes away from its mounting, is the kind of unexpected event external to the passenger that the Saks standard is aimed at. Maintenance and cabin-defect records are usually the evidence that decides these.
• •Hot liquid scalds. Coffee, tea and hot water served in the cabin cause serious burns when a cup is handed across a seat, a lid is not secured, or a cart is jolted. Burns to the lap, thighs and hands can require debridement and skin grafting and can leave permanent scarring. The analysis turns on service temperature, how the item was handed over, and whether the crew was serving during known rough air.
• •The tarmac, the ramp and ground equipment. Passengers boarding by air stairs, and workers around the aircraft, are exposed to belt loaders, tugs, catering trucks, pushback equipment and jet blast. Injuries here frequently involve a ground handling contractor rather than the airline whose name is on the aircraft, which means identifying the correct corporate defendant early is a real part of the case rather than a formality.
• •Terminal floors, escalators and moving walkways. Wet floors near entrances and food courts, transitions between surfaces, luggage carts, escalator and moving-walkway malfunctions, and construction detours cause falls inside the terminal. Whether you are suing Miami-Dade County as operator of the airport or a private tenant of that terminal changes both the deadline and the cap. See our Miami slip and fall page for how the premises side is proved.
• •De-icing, fueling and ground handling errors. Fluid on stairs and bridges, spills at the gate, and equipment operated close to boarding passengers all generate injuries that are easy to blame on the weather and hard to blame on anyone in particular. Contracts between the airline, the airport authority and the handler usually determine who is responsible for the surface you were standing on, and those contracts are obtainable in discovery.
• •Evacuations and emergency slides. An evacuation is violent by design. Slide deployments produce fractures, ankle and leg injuries, friction burns and head trauma, and passengers are frequently injured in the aisle before they ever reach the door. Whether the evacuation itself was properly ordered and managed, and whether the slide functioned as designed, are separate questions with separate potential defendants.
• •Harm caused by another passenger. Assaults, intoxicated passengers and objects dropped from a bin by a fellow traveler raise a distinct question: what the crew knew and what they did about it. The Saks requirement that the event be external to the passenger is generally satisfied, and the practical dispute becomes whether the airline continued serving alcohol, whether crew responded to earlier complaints, and whether the cabin was reasonably supervised.
• •Wheelchair and assisted-boarding transfers. Passengers who need assistance are lifted, transferred to aisle chairs, and moved through gates and bridges by staff who are often employed by a contractor rather than the airline. Drops, unsecured transfers, unattended waits and equipment failures cause fractures and spinal injuries in people who are already medically vulnerable, and the paperwork identifying who was responsible for the transfer is central.

1. Waiting out Article 35. The most effective defense in international aviation costs the carrier nothing. A passenger who assumes the familiar two-year Florida deadline runs from the date of injury, or who waits for treatment to finish before calling anyone, can pass the two-year mark measured from the landing without ever being told. Because Article 35 is treated as a condition precedent rather than an ordinary limitations statute, the usual arguments for extending a missed deadline generally are not available.
2. “That was not an accident.” Expect the carrier to characterize what happened as a normal incident of air travel, or as something internal to you rather than external. That argument is aimed squarely at the standard the Supreme Court set in Air France v. Saks, which requires an unexpected or unusual event external to the passenger — a test the Court said should be applied flexibly after assessing all the circumstances. How the event is described in the first report often shapes this fight for the rest of the case.
3. The early call and the quick voucher. A claims representative contacts you within days, asks for a recorded statement, and offers travel credit, miles or a modest check in exchange for a signed release. This happens before imaging, before you know whether you need surgery, and before anyone has told you which deadline governs. A release signed in week two is very hard to undo in month six.
4. Letting the evidence age out. Cabin defect and maintenance records, crew reports, weather and dispatch data, gate and concourse surveillance, and ground handling paperwork all sit on retention schedules that are measured in weeks, not years. Nothing about your injury automatically triggers preservation. A written demand does.
5. Pointing at the next company down the chain. The airline says the jet bridge belongs to the airport. The airport says the handler operates it. The handler says it was following the airline’s procedure. Meanwhile the deadlines for each of those defendants are different from one another, and one of them may require written presentment to a county agency months before suit.
6. Raising federal preemption. On a domestic claim, expect the carrier to test whether your theory can be recast as a complaint about a price, route or service, which is the territory the Airline Deregulation Act, 49 U.S.C. § 41713(b)(1), occupies. Courts have generally allowed ordinary personal injury claims to proceed notwithstanding the Act, while claims that are really about price, route, or service can be preempted — so the way a claim is pleaded is not a formality.
7. Letting you use the wrong clock against the wrong defendant. Nobody at the airport is going to tell you that a fall in the concourse is a claim against a county agency requiring written presentment to Miami-Dade County and to the Department of Financial Services within six months. A claimant who spends those months negotiating with an adjuster, and only then files, may find the presentment requirement was never satisfied.

The counter is speed and precision: fix the governing framework in week one, calendar the real deadline from the real triggering date, send preservation demands before records cycle, present the claim in writing where a government entity is involved, and build the medical record while the connection to the flight is still obvious.

• ✓We establish which body of law governs before anything else. The full itinerary — every leg, every ticket, including a return purchased as part of the same contract — determines whether the Montreal Convention applies. That answer changes the deadline, the standard of liability, the available limits, and the courts where the case can be filed. It is the first thing we ask for and the first thing we resolve.
• ✓We calendar the deadline from the correct triggering date. On a treaty claim, that is the date the aircraft arrived or ought to have arrived, not the date of the injury and not the date of a death. On a claim against Miami-Dade County as operator of the airport, we calendar the six-month presentment date under Fla. Stat. § 768.28(6)(d) separately from the four-year suit deadline in § 768.28(14). The presentment date is almost always the one that arrives first.
• ✓We identify the right defendant, and often more than one. The airline, the airport authority, a ground handling contractor, a maintenance provider, a concessionaire, and an equipment manufacturer are all separate entities with separate insurers and separate deadlines. Gate assignments, handling agreements and incident paperwork are what actually establish who controlled the thing that hurt you.
• ✓We send a preservation demand immediately. Crew and incident reports, cabin defect and maintenance logs, dispatch and weather data, terminal and gate surveillance, and ground handling records all exist and all cycle. A written preservation demand delivered early is the difference between a file built on documents and a file built on recollection.
• ✓We present the claim in writing where a government entity is involved. Section 768.28(6)(a) requires the claim to be presented in writing to the appropriate agency and to the Department of Financial Services before suit, with a statutory waiting period before an action can be filed. Presentment done late, or sent to only one of the two required recipients, is a defense the county does not have to work for.
• ✓We build the medical record around the flight. Prompt evaluation, complete history taken from the flight forward, imaging where it is indicated, and referrals to treating physicians in the relevant field that connect the mechanism of injury to the diagnosis. Airline claims are frequently defended on a gap in treatment, and the record you create in the first month tends to decide how the last month goes.

Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome; every case depends on its own facts, injuries, and available insurance coverage. Results shown are prior matters handled by the firm and are not a prediction about your case.