I LUV to fly Southwest Airlines. Their fares are the best, their staff is the friendliest, they have a ton of options for flights and won’t penalize you if you have to cancel or change. It’s really a great company.
We’ve also been involved in many work comp cases against Southwest over the years through our network of attorneys. Most of the claims involve people working at Midway as ramp agents on the tarmac or baggage handlers, but we’ve helped many mechanics, flight attendants, reservation specialists and pilots as well.
The most common injury we see with Southwest Airline employees (and other airlines too) are back and shoulder injuries from lifting luggage. This is of course not a shocker to anyone. But literally any work injury can and has happened to Southwest workers including falls from turbulence, getting hit on the head by luggage from an overhead compartment, being hurt when a passenger pulled a flight attendant, carpal tunnel from typing to much, slipping on oil, etc.
Texas where Southwest is based is a terrible place for injured workers. Illinois on the other hand is great for Southwest employees. You can file your case here if you were hurt here, were in Illinois when hired or primarily work out of Illinois. As a result we have helped a lot of flight attendants and pilots from across the country who were hurt on a layover in Chicago.
In fact, due to Illinois traveling employee laws, you can be staying at a hotel as part of your job duties and get hurt there off the clock and still receive benefits as long as you weren’t intoxicated or otherwise goofing off.
Southwest is a “self insured” company which means they pay for their claims out their bottom line, but they hire an outside insurance company, Sedgwick, to process and handle their claims. As you can probably guess, Sedgwick gets evaluated in part on how much money they are saving their client so they are looking for any reason to deny your case. As a result it’s important to not just get an attorney who knows Illinois work comp law, but also who has experience in dealing with Sedgwick and their attorneys. It’s not rocket science, but this experience can be the difference between winning and losing.
If you work for Southwest and were hurt on the job or just have questions, call us any time for a free consultation or fill out our contact form and we will contact you. We will give you honest, direct advice and if we represent you, you will have a true advocate in your corner.
