Eight Kenyan families will sue US aircraft manufacturer Boeing for the deaths of Kenyans in March’s Ethiopian Airlines Crash.
32 Kenyans were among 157 people who died in the tragic accident.
The Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed immediately after take took from the Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
A preliminary investigations report shows that pilots followed correct procedures and regulations before the fatal crash.
The team of Kenyan and American lawyers says they plan to file claims in Chicago next week.
Lawyer Irungu Kang’ata says more families are expressing interest. “So far we have engaged eight families, but it appears there are more families who are expressing their interest.”
Citizens from 33 countries died in the crash. The Kenyans join a Rwandan and an American family that have said they will sue the aircraft manufacturer.
Kang’ata says they welcome Ethiopian Airlines preliminary official report.
“It supports our case that there was negligence on the part of Boeing; that the pilots made every effort to control the plane, but they were unable to do so. Therefore, reasonably lead to a speculation that the actual cause was a malfunctioning of software installed by Boeing.”
This was the second crash of a Boeing 737 Max plane in less than five months after a Lion Air jet crashed in Indonesia in October in 2018, killing all 189 people on board.
Lawyers representing the families of the victims killed in Indonesia’s Lion Air crash want the charges against Boeing tried as one with the Ethiopian saying both incidents showed similarities.
