- The case is related to the March 2019 crash of the Boeing 737 Max in Ethiopia.
- Boeing apologized to the families of the victims and accepted responsibility for the crash.
A federal jury in the United States has awarded more than $28 million in damages to the family of an Indian woman who died more than six years ago in the crash of a Boeing 737 Max plane in Ethiopiathe AP agency reported, writes TASR.
The verdict in favor of the UN consultant’s relatives came Wednesday after a week-long trial in Chicago, where Boeing was once based. It was the first civil trial related to the March 2019 plane crash that killed all 157 people on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302.
In addition, Boeing will pay the victim’s husband an additional $3.4 million in an out-of-court settlement. Together with the 26 percent interest, the total amount that the company will pay to the family will reach $35.8 million.
The plane maker had already reached out-of-court settlements in most of the dozens of lawsuits filed in connection with the crash before the trial in Chicago. The details of these agreements remain confidential. According to lawyers, less than a dozen cases are still open. Boeing apologized to all the families of the victims on Wednesday and said it respects their right to seek compensation in court.
Jurors were not allowed to assess Boeing’s responsibility for the crash itself, as the company had already accepted responsibility for it and for a similar crash of a 737 Max plane that took place five months before the Ethiopian tragedy off the coast of Indonesia. The task of the jury was to determine the amount of compensation for lost income and psychological suffering of the victim’s husband and parents.
A new Boeing 737 Max plane crashed in March 2019 minutes after take off from Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa. Among the victims from 35 countries were the wife and children of former member of the Slovak Parliament Anton Hrenko. The fourth Slovak victim was a charity worker a project manager Danica Olexová.
According to the investigation, the pilots of Ethiopian Airlines faced problems practically from the moment of take-off – during the six minutes of the flight, their on-board instruments literally bombarded them with warnings. The pilots tried to keep the plane in the air, but despite their efforts, it finally crashed at a speed of almost 1,100 kilometers per hour.
US prosecutors have charged Boeing with conspiracy to commit fraud, allegedly by misleading government regulators about the flight control system developed for the 737 Max. In both crashes, the software pointed the nose of the plane down based on faulty data from a single sensor.
