By Rubia Pestitschek
A group of passengers filed a class-action lawsuit last week against JetBlue Airways Corp. for disclosing passenger personal information to U.S Defense Department contractor.
Five Utahns are among the people who filed the lawsuit.
Utah attorney James W. McConkie filed the lawsuit Oct. 22 in 3rd District Court on behalf of five named plaintiffs and a representative class, according to the Associated Press.
'This puts people on notice that this is an important issue,' Salt Lake City lawyer James McConkie said Tuesday, Sept. 30. 'In a post-Sept. 11 climate, there are legitimate security concerns. The foul is not that JetBlue helped the government, it''s how they did it.'
The lawsuit charges JetBlue with fraudulent misrepresentation, breach of contract, and invasion of privacy and seeks unspecified compensatory damages but no punitive damages.
In September of 2002, JetBlue Airways disclosed travel records to Torch Concepts of Huntsville, Ala., including names, phone numbers and credit card information, of 5 million JetBlue customers.
The information was used by Torch to produce a study called 'Homeland Security: Airline Passenger Risk Assessment.' The study was used to help government improve military base security.
JetBlue issued a public apology for the incident last week. The airline released a statement saying it has retained the Deloitte & Touche consulting firm to assist the airline in its analysis and continued development of its privacy policy.
David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue, said in the statement the information given to Torch contained name, address and phone number, along with flight information, but absolutely no payment or credit card information.
Neeleman talked publicly for the first time on Tuesday about last week''s lawsuit.
He told the Associated Press JetBlue did the wrong thing for the right patriotic reasons, but he also conceded he 'probably would have said yes' to the government''s request had the decision fallen to him.
Neeleman reportedly spoke to hundreds of students for the 13th annual Spencer Fox Eccles Convocation at the University of Utah''s David Eccles School of Business on Monday.
'We were a different country then,' Neeleman said. 'We did something that we thought was patriotic.'