'They knew this plane was defective': Wife wants Boeing charged with manslaughter

Rescuers work at the scene of an Ethiopian Airlines flight crash near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Monday, March 11, 2019. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

Boeing should be charged with manslaughter rather than just fined, according to Naoise Ryan, the widow of UN worker Mick Ryan who died in a plane crash in 2019. 

She was speaking yesterday as the aircraft-manufacturing giant was fined $2.5bn (€2bn) for misleading regulators about the safety of its 737 Max planes.

Ms Ryan, whose husband was killed with 156 others in March 2019, said imposing a fine on Boeing, after it was found to be “playing Russian roulette with people’s lives”, simply beggared belief.

She said the company should have been prosecuted for fraud after the first fatal crash in Indonesia in October 2018, which killed all 189 people on board.

“They knew this plane was defective and there would be further crashes and loss of life," she said. 

"After the second crash, they should have been tried and prosecuted for the manslaughter of 346 people. Instead, they get away with a fine.” 

Some 346 people died in two 737 Max air crashes, five months apart.

Mick Ryan was posthumously named the Humanitarian of the Year 2020 by the Irish Red Cross.

On Thursday, the US justice department said Boeing had agreed to pay a fine to settle a criminal conspiracy charge for misleading regulators about the safety of its 737 Max plane.

David Burns, acting assistant attorney general of the department’s criminal division, said Boeing’s employees had chosen “the path of profit over candour” and had concealed important information and later covered up that deception.

The Max aircraft was grounded worldwide after the crash that killed Clare native Mick Ryan and 156 others in March 2019. Since then, a US congressional investigation found that Boeing had a “culture of concealment”, while one US senator, attorney Richard Blumenthal, even accused Boeing of selling “flying coffins”.

That investigation blamed the fatal crashes on a combination of aircraft design flaws, inadequate training, and maintenance problems, as well as inadequate oversight from US regulators which failed to grasp the risks posed by the design of software in the cockpit.

In both fatal crashes, the aircraft nosedived shortly after take-off because of anti-stall software, known as MCAS (manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system), which automatically pushed the plane’s nose down, leaving pilots struggling to regain control.

Boeing has been accused of downplaying the significance of MCAS software and not mentioning it in manuals.

Ms Ryan, however, is far from satisfied that all safety concerns have been addressed. She said her lawyers and relatives of other victims of the crash are still waiting for answers on a number of issues relating to the crash.

Ms Ryan, a civil engineer who, like her husband, has worked with the UN in the field of operations, has lodged a submission with the EU Aviation Safety Agency outlining why the Max should not be cleared to fly.

She says she, her young children Saorlaith and Macdara, and her extended family have been through extreme trauma and grief since her husband’s death.

Last month, Mr Ryan was posthumously named the Red Cross Humanitarian of the Year 2020 for his work as global deputy chief engineer with the UN World Food Programme.