File copy: Red Cross team work amid debris at the crash site of Ethiopian Airlines near Bishoftu, a town about 60 kilometres southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on March 10, 2019. An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 crashed that morning en route from Addis Ababa to Nairobi with 149 passengers and eight crew members on board, according to the airline. (Photo by Michael Tewelde / AFP)
Families of the victims gathered Friday near the headquarters of aircraft manufacturer Boeing to denounce what they called “total impunity” over the loss of life. “There has been no investigation, from a judicial point of view and from a criminal point of view, in the United States for manslaughter,” said Catherine Berthet, who lost her daughter Camille in the accident. Berthet, a French citizen, joined other families from Canada, Germany and elsewhere, brandishing portraits of their loved ones and standing in the rain outside Boeing’s imposing headquarters in suburban Virginia. “Four years later… this plane is still in the air and it is the bestseller of Boeing, this 747 MAX, while it is dangerous,” she said.
On March 10, 2019, six minutes after take‑off from Addis Ababa bound for Nairobi, flight ET302 crashed in a field, killing all 157 passengers and crew. The accident occurred barely five months after a similar tragedy in which a 737 MAX operated by Lion Air crashed into the Java Sea, killing 189 people. The successive disasters plunged Boeing into the worst crisis in its history and forced the worldwide grounding of the MAX fleet for 20 months while investigators probed defects in its flight‑control software, the MCAS anti‑stall system. The aircraft was allowed to fly again in the United States in 2020. “This plane is still dangerous,” Berthet said. “Boeing must be sued for manslaughter… It’s manslaughter and they have to be sued and DOJ has to do its work.”
The U.S. Department of Justice entered into a secret deferred‑prosecution agreement with Boeing that allowed its executives to avoid criminal charges. Boeing acknowledged that two employees misled authorities during the certification of the 737 MAX and agreed to pay $2.5 billion in penalties and compensation in exchange for the deal, which later became public. Berthet and other victims’ families are challenging the agreement in a federal court in Texas. A federal judge ruled in early February that he lacked authority to grant their petition, and the case is now under appeal. Adnaan Stumo, brother of crash victim Samya Rose Stumo, said U.S. prosecutors and Boeing lawyers “were on the same side of the courtroom against the family seeking justice… They struck a sneaky side deal.” (AFP)
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