The widow of an Irish man who died in an Ethiopian Airlines crash two years ago has said she and other families just want justice for their loved ones.
Mick Ryan, from Lahinch in Co Clare, was one of 157 people who died when the Boeing 737 Max crashed minutes after take off en route from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia to Nairobi in Kenya on 10 March 2019.
The father-of-two was part of an engineering unit with the United Nations World Food Programme.
His widow, Naoise Connolly Ryan, is pursuing a civil case against Boeing in the United States.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne, she said she wants to know “what they knew, who knew what, and when” after a similar crash five months before the Ethiopian Airlines incident.
In that instance, 189 people were killed when a flight from Indonesia crashed minutes after the plane took off. In both cases, the crashes were associated with a software failure known as Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).
Ms Connolly Ryan said they found out afterwards from reports and testimonies that when the first crash was investigated, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had predicted a further 15 crashes would happen specifically due to the MCAS during the lifetime of these planes.
If Boeing was using the plane for American Airlines, for example, it had two sensors, but if they were selling it overseas to the rest of the world, they gave an option as to whether they wanted two sensors or one, something Ms Connolly Ryan believes is critical.
“It just seems insane that something that was a matter of safety … that they would give an option for these sensors”, she said.
“A minimum of two sensors installed is standard. These sensors are like little weather vanes … that’s what sends the information to the MCAS. If they’re faulty, they send incorrect information and MCAS kicks in and takes over the plane, so the pilots have no control”.
Boeing was fined $2.5bn in January by the US Justice Department, and the Boeing…