The court affirmed the district court's dismissal of *Monahan v. Southwest Airlines Company*, concluding that the plaintiffs failed to allege a cognizable injury in fact because their theory of economic harm was foreclosed by the court's prior decision in *Earl v. Boeing Co.*
Christine Monahan, Lillian Taylor, and Renee Iannotti sued Southwest on behalf of themselves and a class of passengers who purchased tickets during the period leading up to the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX.
The plaintiffs conceded they never flew on a MAX aircraft. Instead, they asserted a breach-of-contract claim based on Southwest's "Contract of Carriage" and "Customer Service Commitment," which promised that pilots were trained to fly every plane in the fleet, that the airline operated safe aircraft, and that it complied with FAA regulations.
Plaintiffs alleged that Southwest breached these promises by flying "unsafe" and "defective" MAX planes with inadequate pilot training, thereby overcharging them for tickets that were not as safe as marketed.
The Fifth Circuit rejected this argument, stating that whether couched as fraud or breach of contract, the claim rests on the idea that Southwest overcharged customers due to concealed safety risks.
In *Earl*, the court held that plaintiffs lacked standing because they could not plausibly allege they were financially worse off; the court reasoned that if the public had known of the MAX's defects, Southwest likely would have grounded the aircraft entirely rather than lowering prices, which would have increased ticket costs for remaining flights.
The Fifth Circuit ruled that *Earl* applies with equal force to *Monahan*, noting that plaintiffs cannot recast their alleged injury in a different cause of action to generate Article III standing that was lacking in *Earl*.
The opinion was issued by a per curiam panel consisting of Chief Judge Elrod, and Judges Willett and Wilson.