Families of the 32 Kenyans who were among the 157 victims of the March 2019 Ethiopian Airlines plane crash have started receiving compensation from Boeing, amounting to billions of shillings.
The airplane crashed shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport, killing 149 people on board, including 32 Kenyans, as well as individuals from various other nationalities. The flight was scheduled to fly from Bole Airport in Ethiopia to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.
In January, Boeing agreed to compensate the victims’ families after the United States Department of Justice found flaws in the plane’s design, issues that had been concealed from pilots and regulators.
The final report on the Boeing 737 MAX, released in September 2020 by a legislative committee in the United States, highlighted “repeated and serious failures” by Boeing. It identified key factors contributing to the crashes, including design flaws and profit-driven production priorities at the expense of safety.
The report exposed how Boeing, under pressure to compete with Airbus and meet Wall Street profit expectations, evaded scrutiny from the FAA, withheld critical information from pilots, and ultimately put planes into service that led to the deaths of 346 people across two crashes. The Indonesian Lion Air plane of the same model crashed into the sea near Indonesia less than five months earlier, resulting in nearly 190 fatalities.
The criteria used to allocate compensation to the victims’ families consider the age and financial status of each victim at the time of death. “Each eligible family will receive nearly $1.45 million, with payments made on a rolling basis as claim forms are submitted and processed,” administrators Ken Feinberg and Camille Biros informed Reuters.”
– By Ann Precious Kinyua
Email your news TIPS to Editor@nairobilawmonthly.com, and to advertise with us, call +254715061658 anytime of the day
