Irish Examiner view: Humanitarian award puts renewed focus on air safety

Respect must be shown to those who have lost their lives

Mick Ryan, the UN worker killed in a Boeing air crash in 2019, has been named the Red Cross Humanitarian of the Year 2020, a posthumous honour highlighting his belief that engineering could change and save lives — but also a reminder of the cruel fact that he lost his life because of an engineering failure.

The global deputy chief engineer with the UN’s World Food Programme was killed with 156 others in March 2019 when a Boeing 737 Max crashed minutes after take-off, just five months after a similar fatal 737 Max crash in Indonesia killed all 189 people on board.