(Arlington) Families of victims of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX crash gathered Friday outside the aircraft manufacturer’s headquarters near Washington, four years after the tragedy, to denounce its “total impunity”.
“There has been no investigation, from a judicial point of view and from a criminal point of view, in the United States, criminally, for manslaughter,” Frenchwoman Catherine Berthet told AFP. who lost her daughter Camille in the accident.
With other families, especially from Canada and Germany in particular, she brandished in the rain portraits of loved ones who disappeared in 2019 in front of the imposing Boeing building, in the suburbs of the American capital.
On March 10, 2019, six minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa, flight ET302 bound for Nairobi crashed in a field southeast of the Ethiopian capital, killing all 157 passengers and crew.
This accident occurred less than five months after that, in similar conditions, of a 737 MAX of the Indonesian company Lion Air, which had killed 189 people.
The succession of these two tragedies, which plunged Boeing into the worst crisis in its history, brought to light a fault in flight control software, the MCAS anti-stall system. After 20 months on the ground, the aircraft was cleared to fly again in the United States.
“Four years later […]this plane is still in the air and it is Boeing’s best seller, this 737 MAX, while it is dangerous, “said Mr.me Berthet.
The American authorities and Boeing concluded an agreement in early 2021 in which the industrialist admitted that two of its employees had misled the authorities during the certification of the 737 MAX and agreed to pay 2.5 billion dollars in penalties and fines. compensation, in exchange for a cessation of criminal proceedings.
This agreement is contested by Catherine Berthet and other families of victims. A Texas-based federal judge ruled in early February that he lacked the authority to grant their demands, and the case is now on appeal.
In this case, the US government and Boeing “are on the same side of the court, against the families who are seeking justice”, said Adnaan Stumo, who lost his sister Samya in the accident, on Friday.