Flight Attendant Says Alaska Airlines Coffee Exploded And Left Permanent Scars — But She’s Suing Stumptown

Alaska Airlines flight attendant Victoria Waldron sued Stumptown Coffee Roasters in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington on March 27 for an inflight coffee injury that occurred on April 1, 2024.

She says that about 30 minues before landing in Phoenix, the galley coffee maker “suddenly and without warning failed catastrophically,” exposing her to scalding hot coffee, coffee grounds, and boiling water with explosive force, causing severe thermal burns to her chest and other parts of her body.

• She was pregnant at the time, experienced immediate pain and distress, and feared for herself and her unborn child.
  
• The incident left her with permanent scarring, emotional distress, and ongoing dermatological care, with possible future surgical or cosmetic treatment.
  
• And she blames Stumptown’s coffee packaging, which she says was defective and unsafe for aircraft use – and that Stumptown failed to adequately design, test, or validate that packaging for use in aircraft under the pressurized, high heat conditions.

She claims there was a design defect, failure to warn of the danger, and a breach of implied warranty – and that there were at least nine similar incidents before hers, that Stumptown had notice, and that Stumptown took no corrective action. Instead, they continued supplying the same packaging without modification.

In fact, her union put out a safety bulletin two months earlier warning of the dangers of this machine – that it was “spewing hot coffee and grounds” and that they suspected the change in packaging that came with the move to Stumptown was the cause.

Over the past several months, at least nine Flight Attendant injuries have been reported, caused by scalding hot coffee and grounds spewing from the brew basket of older-style B/E Aerospace coffee makers on various aircraft. This is an alarming situation that requires immediate attention.

It’s suspected that the recent changeover in coffee served onboard, which is packaged differently than the old product, may be contributing to this issue. Management has begun investigating the root cause and has identified some potential solutions to address the problem. However, it will likely take significant time to implement the mitigations fully.

Last week, our Air Safety, Health, & Security Committee (ASHSC) sent management an official request to discontinue using B/E Aerospace coffee makers until physical mitigations can be implemented. Despite the inconvenience this may cause by leaving some aircraft with fewer or no coffee makers to use, the Committee believes that potentially seeing multiple Flight Attendants injured while waiting for long-term fixes is unacceptable. Disappointingly, management denied the request, knowingly putting the physical safety and well-being of employees and passengers at risk for the sake of a few more cups of coffee.

Alaska has said the Stumptown rollout involved extensive ground and in-air brewing tests, more than 200 pots, and testing of more than 20 variables, including grind, dose, filter paper, and filter-pack dimensions, in order to ensure the roast worked with all types of brewing machines on Alaska and Horizon aircraft. It’s interesting that Alaska Airlines is not the defendant.

• Alaska had notice of a recurring hazard from at least nine prior injuries.
  
• AFA says it asked management to pull the older B/E coffee makers, and management refused.
  
• Alaska required Brew Shields, suggesting they knew the old configuration was dangerous.
  
• They publicly said they were involved in testing the product, including filter pack dimensions andcompatibility with all aircraft brewing machines.

That seems like an ordinary negligence theory! However, workers comp is going to be the exclusive remedy unless the employer had a deliberate intention to produce the injury. So Alaska doesn’t see the suit (there’s no evidence of their intent to cause harm).

So Stumptown is the target for their product design, testing, warnings, instructions, and packaging. And since the prior Starbucks product reportedly did not have the same issues, there’s a circumstantial starting suggestion that the new packaging did. However,

• It looks like the older B/E Aerospace coffee makers had the issue. So perhaps there was an issue with those machines, plus Alaska required a fix to the brewer.
  
• The union bulletin said the packaging was only suspected to be contributing.
  
• Pre-launch testing suggests they engaged in reasonable care.

Just as Alaska won’t be held liable, workers comp exclusivity also means that Stumptown can’t reduce their fault by allocating a portion of the blame to the airline (at least that’s my read of the workers comp statute and I am not an expert in this area).

I don’t know who’s to blame here, whether the machines or packaging should have been different. I do know that passengers who have a preference for such things generally like Stumptown far more than Starbucks (and even United’s Illy). It’s a real differentiator over Delta (Starbucks).

It’s not just coffee that’s dangerous by the way, since exploding soda cans kept injuring Southwest flight attendants. Usually coffee and tea just winds up harming passengers.