Justice: Boeing escapes trial linked to Ethiopian Airlines crash

The American giant Boeing managed to reach an agreement at the last minute on Monday with the beneficiaries of a victim of the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 in March 2019, thus escaping a federal civil trial in the United States.

Three sources close to the case told AFP that an agreement outside court had been reached in the afternoon, without giving additional details. A trial was scheduled to begin Tuesday morning before a popular jury in Chicago, in the northern United States. It was originally supposed to examine six complaints but, now, all have resulted in an agreement, according to information obtained in recent days.

A judicial source specified that the hearing would be continued on Tuesday morning, if only to inform federal judge Jorge Alonso of these amicable transactions. It is in fact up to the magistrate to approve or reject these agreements. According to a source close to the matter, the complaint which was resolved on Monday concerned Manisha Nukavarapu. It was filed on April 17, 2019, among the first.

Crash six minutes after takeoff

The trial was simply intended to “determine the amount of compensation. No element on Boeing’s responsibility (had to) be presented there,” explained a judicial source, explaining that witnesses (family, friends, colleagues, etc.) had to come and talk about the victim and the impact of his disappearance on their life. Asked by AFP, neither the lawyers representing his relatives nor Boeing commented.

The complaint, which AFP obtained, specifies that Manisha Nukavarapu, an Indian national, was in the second year of a general medicine internship at East Tennessee State University. She planned to become an endocrinologist.

Single and without children, she boarded a Boeing 737 MAX 8 on Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 on March 10, 2019 between Addis Ababa and Nairobi, to visit her sister in the Kenyan capital who had just given birth. , according to the document. But the plane, delivered in October 2018, crashed southeast of the Ethiopian capital six minutes after takeoff.

Several previously planned trials were canceled further ahead due to agreements before the opening of the proceedings, according to a court document dating from June 2023.

Neglect

It specifies that civil complaints were filed by relatives of 155 victims between April 2019 and March 2021, for wrongful death and negligence, among others. As of October 22, there remained “thirty open complaints concerning 29 deceased people,” said another close source.

The complaints were divided into several groups with, for each, a trial date unless an agreement is finalized by then, explained several judicial sources. The next one is scheduled for April 7, 2025. Boeing “accepted publicly and in civil lawsuits responsibility for the MAX crashes because the design of the MCAS (anti-stall software) contributed to these events,” noted a lawyer for the aircraft manufacturer during of a hearing in October.

This software is implicated in the Ethiopian accident but, also, in that of a 737 MAX 8 from the Indonesian company Lion Air – delivered in July 2018 – which crashed at sea on October 29, 2018 around ten minutes after taking off from Jakarta, killing 189 people. Commercial flights of this model began in May 2017. The entire 737 MAX family was grounded for more than twenty months after these crashes.

Criminal aspect

According to the manufacturer, more than 90% of civil complaints linked to the two accidents have been resolved. Boeing paid “several billions of dollars”, in addition to the sums awarded during criminal proceedings before a federal court in Texas, noted its lawyer.

Several dozen civil complaints have also been filed in the United States regarding the Lion Air crash. Only one is still open, according to a judicial progress update published Friday. In the criminal aspect, Boeing signed a so-called deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) in January 2021.

It was called into question after a series of quality problems with its production, which culminated in an in-flight incident in January 2024 on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9, which caused some minor injuries. A plea agreement with the Justice Department was filed July 24 in Fort Worth federal court. As of November 11, the Texas judge had still not issued his approval or rejection decision.

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