‘It’s been a frustrating 4 years’: Families testify emotionally in federal court against Boeing over deadly Max crashes

FORT WORTH, Texas. They came from Connecticut, Kenya, London, Dublin, France and Canada. Families still bear the emotional scars of the Boeing Max 8 crash just after takeoff from Nairobi in 2019.

And four years later in Fort Worth, families are still looking for answers and what they see as justice.

“Well, this is not justice. This is a secret agreement,” said Nadia Milleron, whose daughter Samya Stumo died in the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash.

She and a dozen other family members of the victims of the plane crash attended a hearing in federal court in Fort Worth on Thursday, January 26.

Giving emotional testimony, they each seek to overturn and control the “secret agreement” that Milleron spoke of: a deferred prosecution agreement between Boeing and the Department of Justice, reached two years after the Ethiopian plane crash.

The first Boeing 737 Max 8 crash, Lion Air Flight 610, occurred in October 2018. It crashed in the Java Sea 13 minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 passengers and crew on board.

The investigation focused on the Aircraft’s Maneuverability Enhancement System, a new Boeing system designed to control an aircraft’s angle of attack and prevent it from stalling in flight. But the Max 8 fleet, at that time numbering more than 387 aircraft worldwide, continued to fly.

Five months later, on March 10, 2019, Ethiopian Air Flight 302 crashed six minutes after taking off from Nairobi. This time, 157 people were killed when the suspected MCAS plane again went into an uncontrolled high-speed dive straight to the ground.

Both disasters – a total of 346 deaths.

The fleet was shut down for nearly two years until Boeing and the Justice Department agreed that no one would face criminal charges, millions in fines and restitution would be paid, and government agencies would oversee safety improvements at Boeing.

Paul Njorog, a Kenyan now living in Canada who lost his wife, three children and mother in a plane crash in Ethiopia, says the 5-month hiatus when planes kept flying adds fuel to his rage.

“We know the top executives at Boeing did the scam,” Njorog said.

“Knowing that the world has lost so many wonderful people in such a cruel and senseless way keeps me up at night,” said Tzipora Kuria from London, who lost her 55-year-old father Joseph Kuria in a plane crash in Ethiopia. .

“It’s hard to try and step forward because you always go back to March 10,” she said, holding up a photo of her father. “We are still stuck in that day, and the injustice that continues to expose this wound, we had no idea about the depth that we carried.”

“It was a frustrating four years where we met with the Department of Justice, the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing and wondered when common sense stopped being common sense,” Curia said.

“If we were to trust it and the intent was justice, then why was it done in secret behind closed doors,” said Paul Kiernan of Ireland, who lost his partner Joanna Toole in a second crash.

“No one at Boeing had the guts to meet us face to face,” said Clarissa Moore, holding a photo of her 24-year-old daughter Danielle, who was on a plane to go to a United Nations environmental conference.

“I not only lost my daughter, I lost my past, my today, my future, my tomorrow. And it’s the same with all these people,” Moore said.

In the presence of Boeing and Justice Department lawyers present at the Fort Worth hearing, the families petitioned a federal judge to overturn the DPA’s decision, allow third-party oversight of Boeing’s safety improvements, and allow a group of family members of the victims to participate. .

“Maybe everything Boeing does is good, or maybe it’s not,” said Paul Cassel, an attorney and professor at the University of Utah who administers pro bono cases for families. “And the consequences of not doing the right thing are too catastrophic to imagine.”

Boeing’s lawyers pleaded not guilty at a court hearing on Thursday. Lawyers for Boeing and the Justice Department declined to comment after the hearing.

But in a statement emailed to the WFAA, Boeing responded:

“We deeply regret all those who lost loved ones on Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopia Flight 302, and deeply respect those who spoke out at today’s hearing. We will never forget the lives lost in these accidents, and the memory of them forces us every day to reaffirm our responsibility to all who depend on the safety of our products. We have made massive and profound changes to our company and made changes to the design of the 737 MAX to ensure that accidents like this never happen again. pledge to continue to scrupulously fulfill all of our obligations under the agreement we entered into with the Department of Justice two years ago.”