The widow of a UN aid worker who was killed in an Ethiopian Airlines crash two years ago has said she wants justice for his death.
Clare native Mick Ryan, who lived with his wife Naoise and their two children in Cork, was killed in the plane crash on March 10, 2019.
Mr Ryan was one of 157 passengers from more than 30 countries on board the plane, which crashed minutes after take-off en route from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia to Nairobi in Kenya.
He had relocated to Rome to work in the UN’s Italian headquarters and was due to be joined by his wife, Naoise Connolly Ryan, their children and wider family to celebrate his 40th birthday later that month. His wife and other family members of those killed are now pursuing a civil case against Boeing in the US.
The crash was the second disaster involving the Boeing 737 Max over a number of months. Five months earlier, a Lion Air jet came down in the sea off Indonesia. Both crashes have been attributed to a failure of software known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). Boeing was ordered to pay over $2.5billion (€2billion) in fines and compensation over fraud conspiracy charges related to the plane’s flawed design.
Some aircraft were equipped with just one sensor instead of two, and a faulty sensor causes the nose of the plane to dive.
The jet returned to the skies earlier this year, after planes were equipped with new software and other updates were completed. Ms Connolly Ryan said she wants to know ‘what they knew, who knew what, and when’ during the period between the two crashes.
‘It just seems insane that something that was a matter of safety… that they would give an option…