Boeing ordered to pay $29 million to the family of an Irish victim

A Chicago jury awarded $29 million to the widow of Michael Ryan, an Irish engineer killed in the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max crash in March 2019. This decision comes after a civil lawsuit filed against the American aircraft manufacturer.

Michael Ryan, a father of two, lived in Cork and worked as an engineer for the United Nations World Food Programme. He was among the 157 people who died on March 10, 2019, when Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 crashed six minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa, about 30 kilometers southeast of the airport, near the town of Bishoftu.

His widow, Naoise Connolly Ryan, took the case to American courts. The Chicago jury awarded her $29 million, or approximately £21,5 million, in a civil suit against Boeing.

The family's lawyer, Steven C. Marks of Podhurst Orseck, welcomed a verdict that "represents an important step toward accountability and justice." "No amount of money can replace a life or erase the profound loss suffered by his family," he acknowledged, adding that Naoise Connolly Ryan had "pursued justice for Mick with extraordinary strength and determination."

Boeing responded with a statement expressing its "deepest regrets to all those who lost loved ones" in the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes. The manufacturer specified that it had "resolved almost all of these cases through amicable settlements," while acknowledging the families' right to pursue legal action.

The crash of flight ET302 was linked to the MCAS automatic control system, designed to correct the aircraft's pitch. According to a 2019 report by Ethiopian authorities, two sensors began recording divergent data shortly after takeoff, triggering the system, which repeatedly pushed the aircraft's nose down until impact. The pilots had attempted to disable the system manually, without success. The same mechanism had been identified in the Lion Air crash five months earlier.

Originally from County Clare, Michael Ryan had a humanitarian career spanning several continents. The United Nations memorial page credits him with organizing the construction of shelters in Bangladesh that protected tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees from landslides and floods, as well as building medical centers in Liberia during the Ebola epidemic from 2014 to 2016. "His impact was global," his lawyer summarized.