An Alabama man sued American Airlines Inc., alleging that the airline was unprepared for bad weather that resulted in thousands of passengers being stranded in late December 2006. James D. Harper Jr. filed a class action complaint against American Airlines in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. He alleges that it took 28 hours for his family to get from Cancun, Mexico, to Huntsville, Ala., on December 29, 2006. The trip was scheduled to take approximately eight hours. Harper claims that his family and numerous passengers spent seven of the 28 hours aboard an idled airplane at the New Orleans airport. The plaintiff claims that American Airlines had ample advanced warning of weather conditions at Dallas and knew or should have known that it was not able to land aircraft at Dallas at the capacity it had scheduled on December 29. During the time they were sequestered on the airplane, Harper claims that the toilets backed up and began to smell strongly. The flight attendants also told passengers that the plane had not been provisioned for an extended period and therefore had no food or beverages to provide passengers during the delay, according to Harper.  After departing New Orleans, Harper claims that they were flown to Dallas only to find that their luggage was wet because it had been left outside in the rain for an extended period. Harper claims that as many as 124 flights on December 29, 2006, were confined to aircraft diverted from Dallas by American Airlines to 17 other airports and confined for three to 12 hours in poor or deplorable conditions.

The plaintiff claims that American Airlines refused to provide payment for overnight lodging, meals, ground transportation or other expenses incurred by passengers as a result of the airline's decision to divert passengers. The plaintiff claims that by confining passengers to inhumane conditions, the airline recklessly endangered the safety of the putative class. The plaintiff seeks to represent a class of all people who suffered losses and were damaged by American Airlines' alleged misconduct on Dec. 29 and 30, 2006, by diversions from the Dallas airport and the subsequent delays, injuries, confinements and indignities suffered as a result of the airline's conduct.

The plaintiff seeks damages in the amount of $8,000 for each violation of the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air. Harper maintains that the convention is an international treaty that was ratified by the United States in 2003 and provides compensation for international air passengers who are delayed.