First, take the battery out of the laptop right away. Don't try to start it up again until it has had at least several days to dry out. You can google procedures for this.

I'd make sure to have a copy of the incident report from the FA before you leave the plane.

Best of luck! At least the FA has acknowledged responsibility, so you should get repair or replacement. The screen flickers don't sound all that good, though. Hopefully at least he hard drive is intact.

You might post on the Travel Tech forum for more advice about recovery; some good techie FTers there.

A first approximation: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...lled-on-laptop