US Airways Agrees to $9.8M Delayed Checked Bag Class Action Settlement

Flyers and US Airways reached a $9.85 million settlement that will resolve a class action lawsuit that claimed the company breached its contract by not refunding the checked baggage fee it charges to flyers whose luggage is lost or delayed.

The preliminary approval for the settlement deal was filed in California federal court on Tuesday.

Estimates show that the $9.85 million deal will give each of the roughly 400,000 Class Members an award of around $14. According to the flyers, this amount is “an outstanding result given that for most of the class period the baggage fee was $15.”

Further explaining why they chose to settle as opposed to taking the US Airways case to trial, flyers went on to say that “while [the flyers’] counsel are confident in their ability to certify and maintain the class action status through trial, there are always risks inherent in litigation, and the [flyers’] counsel acknowledge that there are always shallowness in proving gullibility and damages, as well as the possibly that defendants will raise meritorious defenses to the certified claims.”

The proposed US Airways class action settlement will compensate anyone who traveled on a US Airways flight between November 2005 and April 2010 and reported that their checked baggage had been lost or stolen. US Airways merged with American Airlines in 2013.

The US Airways lost baggage class action lawsuit was initially filed in 2010 by plaintiff Hayley Hickcox-Huffman who argued that US Airways breached contract with its passengers by not returning the $15 checked bag fee to customers whose bags the airline had lost.

Hickcox-Huffman said that she flew on a US Airways flight from Colorado Springs, Colo. to San Luis Obispo, Calif., checked a bag, and was charged a $15 fee to check it.

She claimed that her baggage was delivered a day late, and she was not refunded her $15 fee. According to Hickcox-Huffman, US Airways made this a general policy, and she sought to represent all passengers who had their bags delayed or lost between November 2005 and April 2010.

In 2011, the US Airways baggage class action lawsuit was dismissed when a court determined that the federal Airline Deregulation Act prevented her claims of warranty breach from being valid.

However, the US Airways lost luggage class action lawsuit was revived in May 2017 after it was determined that Hickcox-Huffman had indeed successfully argued that US Airways could have breached its contract, despite the Airline Deregulation Act limitations.

However, when the case was revived U.S. Magistrate Judge Howard R. Lloyd threw out two of Hickcox-Huffman’s claims, saying that her breach of federal common law claim and “breach of self-imposed undertaking” claims were redundant to other claims she had already made.

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Hickcox-Huffman is represented by Robert A. Curtis of Foley Bezek Behle & Curtis LLP.

The US Airways Checked Baggage Fee Class Action Lawsuit is Hickcox-Huffman v. US Airways Inc., et al., Case No. 5:10-cv-05193, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.