Grief mixes with anger on crash anniversary
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — The year since the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max has been a journey through grief and anger for Ruth Kageche and others whose loved ones were on the plane.
Grief at the staggering toll: 157 lives lost when the plane crashed six minutes after takeoff. Anger that the plane was flying at all, five months after another brand-new 737 Max crashed off the coast of Indonesia, killing 189 people.
The crash was not only devastating for the families of victims, it also had farreaching consequences for the aeronautics industry as it brought about the grounding of all Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 jets, which remain out of service.
Flight 302 took off from Addis Ababa airport the morning of March 10, 2019. Almost immediately, the pilots reported problems with the plane and asked for permission to return to the airport. They never made it. After a struggle to control the plane, it nose-dived into a barren patch of land about 40 miles from Addis Ababa.
The flight was headed to Nairobi, and 32 of the pasThe sengers were Kenyan, the largest number of the 35 nationalities on board. The Rev. George Mukua Kageche, a Catholic priest, was among the passengers, returning home on his annual leave from Rome.
A year later his sister, Ruth Kageche, visited his grave on the family’s farm in Kenya where she buried what she said were the “fragments” of her brother returned to her — a hand, a few bits of flesh and bone. Kageche said that since receiving the remains, neither she nor any family member has received any assistance or compensation from the airline or Boeing.
“Actually they called us to go for the fragments and from there, they just kept quiet,” said Kageche. “Now it’s the time they have started talking about the memorial.”
Families of the passengers have filed more than 100 lawsuits against Boeing. Kageche family’s lawyer, Irungu Kang’ata, said “more and more evidence has been coming up that shows that Boeing had done something bad.”
He pointed to messages and emails between Boeing employees including test pilots and production manager who had safety concerns about the Max, especially a flight-control system called MCAS that was not included on previous 737 models. These confessions, Kang’ata said, boost the victims’ cases.
Ethiopian Airlines and Boeing have planned a private commemoration Tuesday at the site of the crash for family members of victims.
Relatives from the United States, Canada and other parts of the world are being flown to Addis Ababa at Boeing’s expense for the memorial. Ethiopian officials did not plan to allow press coverage.