Canadians Officially Suing Boeing Over Deaths In Ethiopian Airlines Crash

It's been over a month since the Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed killing several Canadians in the incident. Now, families of the Canadians that died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash are now officially suing Boeing aircraft in relation to the deadly incident. In response to the crash, Canada officially banned all Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 planes from flying indefinitely across the country.

Last month, Narcity reported that 18 Canadians died among the 157 passengers onboard the Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed on March 10. Six of those Canadians were members of a beloved Brampton, Ontario family. Now, families of 10 of those Canadians are officially filing a suit against Boeing for their fault in the deadly ordeal.

According to City News, lawyers representing the families are claiming that Boeing rushed to send these new jets to market without consideration of their safety, which resulted in a plane crash that killed 157 people.

Specifically, lawyers in Chicago have filled the suit against Boeing on behalf of the Brampton family that lost six members of their family and also for another man, Paul Njodoge, of Hamilton, Ontario who lost his entire family in the crash. His wife, Carolyne Karanja, his seven-year-old son, four-year-old daughter and nine-month-old daughter all died in the Ethiopian Airlines incident. 

The lawyers representing the families claim that Boeing was reportedly blinded by greed when they rushed to add the Boeing 737 Max 8 jets to market. They claim that Boeing cared more about the profits over the safety of their passengers. They claim this was shown when the plane evidently crashed and killed 157 passengers. 

The families have also filed a claim against the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration claiming that the government administration enabled the planes to be rushed to market before they were ready.

According to CTV News, the claims read, "Blinded by its greed, Boeing haphazardly rushed the 737 Max 8 to market, with the knowledge and tacit approval of the United States Federal Aviation Administration while Boeing actively concealed the nature of the automated system defects,".

The Chicago lawyers continued to allege, "Numerous decisions by Boeing's leadership substantially contributed to the subject crash and demonstrate Boeing's conscious disregard for the lives of others.

The lawsuits also allege that this problem with the Boeing Max 737 planes occurred before. On October 28, 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 had similar issues when the same kind of plane crashed into the Java Sea killing 189 people in Indonesia.

The issue that allegedly caused the crash has to do with the planes' anti-stall system known as the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration apparently discovered that Boeing had de-activated a signal that was designed to warn the cockpit crew of any malfunctions in the MCAS system.

Inspectors from the FAA reportedly learned that Boeing deactivated the signal on all 737 Max planes and opted to make it optional, as the system would cost more money. Japan Times states that Boeing deactivated the signal without telling major carriers like Southwest, who requested that Boeing implement the signal after the Lion Air crash last year.

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg addressed the media and shareholders this morning for the first time since the crash in March. He claims that immediately after the Lion Air incident, their top engineers worked in collaboration with the Federal Aviation Association to develop and implement a new "software update" will run help prevent the issue that caused both accidents in the future. 

He says that it will help resolve the issue that seemingly happened in both the Lion Air incident and the Ethiopian Airlines crash. However, the lawyers suggest that pilots were not informed of the new flight control system.

Boeing has not formally responded to the allegations or the suit.