The wife of an Irishman who died in a plane crash that killed all 157 people on board is pleading for ‘six minutes’ of US President Joe Biden’s time during his visit to Ireland.
Co. Clare engineer Mick Ryan, 40, perished in the Boeing 737 Max aircraft disaster in Ethiopia in March 2019. His wife, Naoise Connolly Ryan, has written an open letter to President Biden as part of her ‘fight for justice’.
American aircraft manufacturer Boeing has argued it should not have to pay more money to families after insisting the victims died instantly and therefore did not suffer before they perished. Speaking on Newstalk, Ms Connolly Ryan said six minutes of Mr Biden’s time would be ‘very significant for all the families’.
‘That is the time it took for the Boeing Max plane, from take-off, before it crashed into the ground in [Ethiopian capital] Addis Ababa,’ she said. ‘So really it was only asking for six minutes of President Biden’s time.
I felt that, within that timeframe, I could introduce myself and introduce Mick and the person he was, the difference he made in the world and discuss our ongoing battle for justice and ask for his support.’
The grieving widow said her husband Mick was ‘absolutely dedicated to the work he did but was also a dedicated family man. ‘We had two young children together, they are now seven and four, and he just idolised the ground they walked on,’ she said.
‘He was the deputy chief engineer for the United Nations World Food Programme. ‘He travelled to a lot of dangerous countries in the world: places that were war-torn or had civil unrest, places where there had been an outbreak of Ebola – he built hospitals in these places.’
The Boeing 737 MAX passenger airliner was grounded worldwide for nearly two years after 346 people died in two separate crashes – one in Indonesia in 2018, and the tragedy in Ethiopia.
Flaws in the plane’s Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) were responsible for the two crashes. Boeing accepted liability for their deaths and paid out € 2.27 billion to the victims’ families to avoid a trial. However, the relatives are now fighting to have the deal reopened, which could potentially lead to legal actions.
Ms Connolly Ryan is seeking President Biden’s support to lift a gagging order that was put in place early in the legal process. ‘We are looking for accountability and we basically need President Biden’s help,’ she said.
‘This deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) actually gives immunity to the CEOs of Boeing, so not only are we trying to fight this battle in court to get this DPA torn up and have our rights acknowledged, we also want to submit new evidence to the [US] Department of Justice to prove the CEOs were aware that these planes had problems before the crashes.’
Ms Connolly Ryan claimed the crashes were caused by ‘plain and simple corporate greed’. ‘This was about Boeing trying to get a plane certified under an old design so they didn’t have to go through a whole new design process and spend billions of dollars on a new plane,’ she said.
‘In doing so, to get passed the certification, they had to pass certain tests ‘To pass these tests they needed a system called MCAS and they hid this from the FAA [US Federal Aviation Authority], which was the regulating body, because if the FAA had known about it, they would have said, “Well OK, you need to provide more pilot training”, which would again cost more money and there would have been delays.
So, they were defective, they were corrupt [and] they defrauded the Government. Lawyers for Boeing insisted in a recent court filing that the victims died painlessly, citing an expert who said the aeroplane crashed into the ground so fast that their brains did not have time to process any pain.
The February filing states that any pain and suffering felt before impact is not legally relevant for calculating damages – after lawyers for the families argued that they should be compensated for the terror their loved ones felt during the six-minute plunge.
They maintain the company should thus be held liable for the proposed payments, even if Illinois law indicates otherwise. The basis for the families’ claims is that the terror their loved ones felt as they fell toward the ground constitutes suffering.
