Family of Irish Boeing crash victim welcomes UK 'unlawful killing' verdict
Larry In Air In Naoise Ryan City, Picture: Cummins In Husband Boeing Crash Max A 2019 Whose Died Home Cork Mick Connolly At
The family of Irishman Mick Ryan, who died in a 737 Max Boeing crash with 156 others in 2019, has welcomed an inquest ruling in Britain which found the three British victims were “unlawfully killed”.
UN humanitarian Mick Ryan's mother Christine Ryan and widow Naoise Connolly Ryan jointly welcomed the ruling, saying those responsible at Boeing must now be prosecuted for manslaughter.
They have also called on the US Justice Department to tear up an “unlawful and unjust” agreement that exempts Boeing from prosecution.
On Monday, an inquest at Horsham in Britain heard that Boeing was playing “Russian roulette” with people’s lives by allowing a plane with a design flaw in the air.
Senior coroner Penelope Schofield said Flight ET302 crashed six minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on March 10, 2019, as a result of a series of failures relating to the development and operation of the flight control software known as MCAS.
She said two Boeing employees had deliberately deceived regulators and operators of the 737 Max about the operation of a safety-critical system.
Five months earlier, an identical flaw caused another Boeing 737 Max to crash into the sea off Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board.
The coroner ruled that the three British people on board the Ethiopian flight — Joanna Toole (36), Samuel Pegram (25), and Oliver Vick (45) — were unlawfully killed.
“This is a UK win, but it’s also a win for us all," said Christine Ryan and Naoise Connolly Ryan.
The family says nobody has been prosecuted because Boeing made “a secret sweetheart deal”, known as a Deferred Prosecution Agreement, with the US Department of Justice which exempts the global aircraft manufacturer from prosecution.
In 2021, Boeing was fined $2.3m (€2.09m) when it was found that it had misled regulators.
The company’s CEO Dennis Muilenberg was fired, but he left with a $80m (€72.6m) severance package.
“No one, not one single person was ever held to account,” Ms Connolly Ryan said.
Mr Ryan’s family, like many others of those killed in the crash, said they would continue to seek justice through the courts.