157 people perished in Ethiopia in 2019 while flying on a Boeing 737 Max aircraft, including Sam Pegram, Oliver Vick, and Joanna Toole.
A verdict of illegal killing was sought by the families’ attorneys prior to an inquest into the deaths of their loved ones.
According to testimony given in court, a design defect caused flight ET302 from Addis Abeba to Kenya to crash shortly after takeoff.
Due to a sensor malfunction, the flight control system—which was intended to make flying the aircraft simpler and more predictable—deployed at the wrong time and sent the aircraft into a dangerous plunge.
The jet crashed in a secluded field outside of Ethiopia’s capital despite the pilots’ best efforts to recover control of it.
According to West Sussex coroner Penelope Schofield, a number of errors in the design and functioning of the flight control software known as MCAS led to the event.
She said that two manufacturer personnel had purposefully misled regulators and 737 Max operators regarding the operation of a safety-critical system.
The 25-year-old humanitarian worker was described by Mr. Pegram’s parents as a gentle, sensitive man with a contagious sense of humor throughout the inquiry.
“He had a passion for human rights, but he also had the drive and the inner strength to make a difference,” Mark, his father, said.
The father of Ms. Toole, a 36-year-old environmental activist, described his daughter as having “the rare combination of empathy for animals and people.”
According to him, losing a child is “like losing a part of yourself,” he continued.
In addition to being a humanitarian, Mr. Vick was a loving father to his girls and had a “unwavering focus on making the world a better place for as many people as possible,” according to his mother Cheryl.
Abdulqadir Qasim, a former refugee from Somalia who immigrated to the UK at the age of 25, was killed in the crash while en route to Kenya for a meeting regarding a new job.
Although there was no formal investigation into the cause of his death, his wife Qamar praised him as a “wonderful husband and father” in a video statement played in court on Monday.
She claimed that his youngest son, who had only been a toddler at the time of the collision, had no recollection of his father.
Prior to the tragedy in Ethiopia, a second Boeing 737 Max that was flying over Indonesia experienced the same malfunction and crashed into the water, killing 189 people.
Later, the business took ownership of the flight’s disappearance, but in a deal with the US government, it received immunity from prosecution in exchange for paying $2.5 billion (£1.9 billion) in fines and compensation.
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