Monahan v. Southwest Airlines Company

── Monahan v. Southwest Airlines Company ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Date: April 16, 2026 Category: Private Civil Diversity Case: 25-50559 Document: 79-1 Page: 1 Date Filed: 04/16/2026 United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit ____________ FILED April 16, 2026 No. 25-50559 Lyle W. Cayce ____________ Clerk Christine Monahan, Lillian Taylor, and Renee Iannotti, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs—Appellants, versus Southwest Airlines Company, Defendant—Appellee. ______________________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas USDC No. 6:21-CV-887 ______________________________ Before Elrod, Chief Judge, and Willett and Wilson, Circuit Judges. Per Curiam:* In this class-action lawsuit, Plaintiffs sue Southwest Airlines Company (Southwest) on behalf of themselves and everyone who bought a Southwest plane ticket between August 2017 and March 2019. Two Southwest flights crashed during that period, but Plaintiffs were not ticketed to fly on those flights. Instead, Plaintiffs assert a broader breach-of-contract _____________________ * This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5. Case: 25-50559 Document: 79-1 Page: 2 Date Filed: 04/16/2026 No. 25-50559 claim based on alleged safety assurances that accompany all Southwest tickets. Plaintiffs allege that Southwest breached those promises by allowing inadequately trained pilots to fly unsafe planes in violation of federal regulations. At bottom, Plaintiffs’ claim is that Southwest overcharged them for tickets because their flights were not as safe as Southwest promised. The district court dismissed Plaintiffs’ class-action complaint, concluding that Plaintiffs had not plausibly alleged an injury in fact as required for Article III standing. We agree that Plaintiffs fail to satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement, albeit for a different reason than the district court’s: Our decision in Earl v. Boeing Co., 53 F.4th 897 (5th Cir. 2022), forecloses Plaintiffs’ alleged theory of economic injury. We therefore affirm. I. Southwest’s fleet of planes includes a variety of aircraft from Boeing’s 737 series, including the Boeing 737 MAX 8 (MAX). In March 2019, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded all MAX flight operations after two MAX aircraft crashed within five months. The technical details are unnecessary for our analysis, but the gist of Plaintiffs’ allegations is that the MAX aircraft utilized an unsafe avionics tool called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). If a MAX plane’s nose tipped too far upward, the MCAS automatically—and without notice to the pilots—redirected the nose of the aircraft downward. According to Plaintiffs, the MCAS “played a prominent role” in the two MAX airplane crashes. Plaintiffs sued Southwest on behalf of themselves and a class consisting of people who purchased Southwest plane tickets for travel between August 29, 2017, and March 13, 2019. Plaintiffs concede that they never flew on a MAX aircraft during that period. I