Boeing settles to avoid civil trial over Ethiopian Airlines crash

TDT | Manama

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Boeing has reached a last-minute settlement to avoid a civil trial that was due to start Monday over the fatal 2019 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX plane, the plaintiffs' lawyers said.

The Chicago trial was to feature two plaintiffs who lost family members in the calamity, but both cases were settled on Sunday evening, the Clifford law firm told AFP.

The Boeing plane crashed on March 10, 2019, just six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa on its way to Kenya, killing all 157 people on board.

Relatives of 155 of the victims had sued Boeing between April 2019 and March 2021 for wrongful death, negligence and other charges.

As of late last month, there were 18 complaints still open against Boeing, a source familiar with the case told AFP.

Sunday's deal meant that a further four cases had been settled since then, multiple judicial sources told AFP.

US Judge Jorge Alonso has split the Boeing lawsuits into groups of five or six plaintiffs, only annulling a potential trial if all the suits settle.

In November, the aviation giant reached a last-minute agreement with the family of a woman killed in the crash.

The Ethiopian Airlines disaster followed another fatal crash involving a MAX plane -- that of a Lion Air jet that crashed in Indonesia in October 2018, killing all 189 people on board.

Boeing also faced dozens of complaints from Lion Air family victims. Just one case remained open, as of the end of March.