The family of a British woman who died when an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed in March is taking action against Boeing, claiming “a catalogue of serious failures” by the US aeroplane manufacturer.
The family of UN-worker Joanna Toole have begun legal action in a federal court in Chicago. The family say it is the first case to have been filed on behalf of a British passenger in connection with the two crashes of Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft.
Ms Toole, 36, was one of seven British passengers on board Flight 302 when it crashed in Ethiopia on March 10, killing all 157 passengers and crew.
Boeing already faces a number of lawsuits from families of victims in connection with the accident, as well as an earlier one in Indonesia. Together they killed 346 people.
Another victim of the Ethiopian Airlines crash was the grandniece of Ralph Nader, the consumer activist, who is also suing Boeing. The Max has remained grounded worldwide since March and no firm timetable exists for its return to the skies.
The new claim, which is being led by law firm Irwin Mitchell, includes Rosemount Aerospace, a subsidiary of United Technologies, which made the faulty angle-of-attack sensors implicated in the two crashes.
Although official investigations into the accidents are ongoing, it is thought that in both crashes a faulty sensor caused the MCAS anti-stall system to activate.
The system is designed to automatically pitch the plane’s nose downwards when it senses a stall is imminent.
Clive Garner, partner at Irwin Mitchell, said the allegations against Boeing included criticism of the company’s decision to fit new, larger engines to the existing 737 airframe, which altered the aircraft’s handling characteristics and ultimately led to the introduction of MCAS.
Mr Garner said the claim also included Rosemount as a defendant as it manufactured the angle-of-attack sensors “at least one of which appears to have been faulty”.
“The sensor sent inaccurate information to the MCAS system, which repeatedly pitched the nose of the aircraft downwards, overruling the actions of the pilots who repeatedly tried to gain altitude to avoid the aircraft hitting the ground,” he said.
Boeing declined to comment on the lawsuit directly but said it extended its “deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of all those on board Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and Lion Air Flight 610”. It added it was co-operating fully with the investigating authorities.
United Technologies declined to comment.
Boeing has been working on a software update to MCAS but has yet to submit it to the US aviation safety agency, the Federal Aviation Administration.
Both Boeing and the FAA have come under scrutiny for their roles in the certification of the Max. Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg said in April that the company had “followed exactly the steps in our design and certification processes that consistently produce safe aeroplanes”.
It has also previously stated that the absence of a cockpit alert designed to inform pilots that one of the sensors did not work did not adversely impact the safety of the plane.
The Ethiopian Airlines plane was not fitted with one of these sensors. Boeing has since said that an angle-of-attack disagree alert will be fitted to all 737 Max aircraft before they return to service.
Ms Toole was travelling to the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, when the crash occurred. Her father Adrian said the family had been “stunned to learn about the apparent technical issues with the aircraft which was a new and supposedly state- of-the-art plane” in the aftermath of the accident.
