FORT WORTH, Texas — They came from Connecticut, Kenya, London, Dublin, France and Canada. Families still bear the emotional scars of a Boeing Max 8 crash just after takeoff from Nairobi in 2019.
And four years later, in Fort Worth, families are still looking for answers and what they consider justice.
“Well, that’s not justice. It’s a secret agreement,” said Nadia Milleron, whose daughter Samya Stumo died in the Ethiopian Air flight 302 crash.
She and a dozen other victims' family members of that crash attended a hearing in federal court in Fort Worth Thursday, Jan. 26.
With each giving emotional testimony, they are seeking to overturn and oversee the “secret agreement” Milleron referred to: the Boeing and Department of Justice Deferred Prosecution Agreement reached in the two years after the Ethiopian Air crash.
The first crash of a Boeing 737 Max 8, Lion Air flight 610, was October 2018. It went down in the Java Sea 13 minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 passengers and crew on board.
The investigation zeroed in on the plane’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, a new Boeing system designed to control the plane’s angle of attack and to keep it from stalling in flight. But the Max 8 fleet, more than 387 worldwide at the time, continued to fly.
Until it happened again.
Five months later, March 10, 2019, Ethiopian Air flight 302 crashed six minutes after takeoff from Nairobi. This time, 157 people were killed when the plane, with the MCAS system suspected again, went into an uncontrolled high-speed dive directly into the ground
Both crashes – a total of 346 dead.
The fleet was grounded for nearly two years, until Boeing and the Department of Justice agreed no one would face criminal charges, millions in fines and restitution would be paid, and government agencies would oversee safety improvements at Boeing.
Paul Njorog, a Kenyan now living in Canada who lost his wife, his three children and his mom in the Ethiopian crash, says that 5-month gap, the planes allowed to continue flying, is what adds fuel to his rage.
“We know that the senior executives at Boeing perpetrated the fraud,” said Njorog.
“To know that the world has lost so many incredible people in such a violent and needless way, it keeps me awake at night,” said Zipporah Kuria, of London, who lost her 55-year-old father Joseph Kuria in the Ethiopian crash.
“It’s difficult to try and take a step forward because you’re always brought back to the 10th of March,” she said, while holding a photo of her father. “We are still stuck on that day and the injustice that keeps unveiling this wound, we had no idea of the depth that we carried.”
“It’s been a frustrating four years to see the DOJ, the FAA and Boeing, and wonder when common sense stopped being common," said Kuria.
“If we were to trust it and the intention was justice, then why was it done in secret behind closed doors,” said Paul Kiernan from Ireland, who lost his partner Joanna Toole in the second crash.
“No one from Boeing company even has the guts to face us,” Clariss Moore said, while holding a photo of her daughter Danielle, 24, who was on the plane to go to a United Nations environmental conference.
“I not only lost my daughter, I lost my past, my today, my future, my tomorrow. And the same with all these people,” said Moore.
With Boeing and DOJ lawyers in attendance at the hearing in Fort Worth, the families asked a federal judge to overrule the DPA, allow oversight of the Boeing safety improvements by a third party, and allow input from a group of victims’ family members as well.
“Maybe everything Boeing is doing is fine, but maybe it’s not,” Paul Cassell said, an attorney and an University of Utah professor, who is leading the case for the families pro bono. “And the consequences of them not doing what’s right is too catastrophic to imagine."
Lawyers for Boeing entered a not guilty plea at the Thursday arraignment. Boeing and DOJ lawyers refused comment after the hearing.
But in a statement emailed to WFAA, Boeing responded:
"We are deeply sorry to all who lost loved ones on Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Flight 302, and greatly respect those who expressed their views at the hearing today. We will never forget the lives lost in these accidents and their memory drives us every day to uphold our responsibility to all who depend on the safety of our products. We have made broad and deep changes across our company, and made changes to the design of the 737 MAX to ensure that accidents like these never happen again. We also are committed to continuing to comply scrupulously with all of our obligations under the agreement we entered into with the Justice Department two years ago."