Front Burner - Families grieve, seek justice, after Ethiopian Air plane crash

Episode Date: July 1, 2019

This March, a Boeing 737 Max 8 plane crashed in Ethiopia, killing all 157 people on board. 18 of them were Canadian, and several more were permanent residents. Now, six families from Canada who lost relatives are suing Boeing for alleged negligence in the Ethiopia Airlines crash. The CBC’s Susan Ormiston spoke to three of them, and brings us their reflections and lingering questions about what happened.

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On the morning of March 10th of this year, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 was cleared for takeoff. Just like so many other planes flying out of Addis Ababa Airport, nothing unusual was happening. There were 157 people on board on their way to Nairobi, Kenya. But six minutes into the flight, the plane started diving to the ground. We are following breaking news out of Ethiopia where a plane went down killing everyone on board. The airline told state media there were people of more than 30 nationalities among the dead. Family members rushed to airports, desperate to find out what had happened. 18 Canadians were on board, including several other permanent residents.

Canada was affected second only to Kenya. And when this happened, my colleague Susan Ormiston flew to Ethiopia to cover the story. We spoke to her at the time. A sort of black scorched scar. The earth has been disturbed. The plane, I understand, came in nose first, dove with such force into the ground that it buried part of the plane. And today, Susan is back to tell us what's happened since to the families who lost loved ones as they take Boeing to court over the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. This is Frontliner. Susan, thank you so much for being here today.

You're welcome, Jamie. It's always a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Susan, thank you so much for being here today. You're welcome, Jamie. It's always a pleasure to have you on the podcast. So as I understand it, there are six families from Canada who have now taken their case against Boeing to a U.S. federal court. And I know that you've met with a few of them and you spoke with some of them in Ethiopia. I want to start today with one family story.

Can you tell me about Paul and Jiroki? Four or five days after the crash in Ethiopia, I met a man called Paul. And when I spoke to him, the first thing he said to me was... I booked the flights for them. And every time they travel anywhere, I book the flights. And he was talking about his family, his wife Carolyn, his children, Ryan, six, Kelly, four, and a baby, Ruby, and his mother-in-law. He had booked their flights on that aircraft to go for a family trip to Kenya, and he'd woken up on that Sunday morning with a Bloomberg alert on his phone

because he'd stayed back to work that the flight had crashed. He was in shock. When I think of that plane coming down and, you know, what she thought about it, you know, she must have thought about me and how I'm going to live. And the kids, you know, they must have called their mommy. They must have cried out their daddy. That's what breaks my heart. We were the first journalists he spoke to.

I remember when you talked to Paul, and I've thought about him often over the last couple of months. How is he doing now? Yeah, I thought about him a lot, maybe daily, because I did want to know how he was doing. He's in Toronto now, and obviously trying to cope, trying to wade through his profound grief. He told me that that little family was the only thing he ever wanted. He was a wealth manager for a bank. He'd met Carolyn at university in Nairobi. My wife, Carol, was the only girl that I ever dated. They were one of these young, educated couples from Kenya

that was going to make their mark in the world, and they'd come to Canada and North America to raise their family. And all of a sudden sudden all of that, all of that was gone. You know, I walk along the streets and I see people with their children and, you know, I cry. I see a senior couple walking along the streets holding hands and I miss my wife. So he's had counseling, he's gotten some comfort from meeting other families who've lost people suddenly. And you know, has he found anything that's helped him to manage his grief? Yeah, it is management. It's, he can't sleep very well. He has nightmares. Nightmares about planes falling from the sky.

Sometimes I have nightmares when I'm talking with them, when I'm playing with them, only to wake up and realize that I'm still alone, and I'll be alone for the rest of my life. So he's having trouble sleeping, so he told me that he runs. He runs himself to near exhaustion some days on a track so that his mind will still enough for him to sleep. The most important thing to me is for Boeing and the FAA to accept their responsibility over the deaths of 346 people, both in the Lion Air crash and in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines. The Ethiopia flight crashed in March. It came several months after another crash just off

the coast of Indonesia this past fall. Yeah, that's critical. Lion Air crashed on October 29th into the sea. Everyone died. Only four months later, another crash, the same aircraft, similar pattern of events. They're still wondering how could that have happened? I know you spoke to other families. And can you tell me about the parents of Danielle Moore? Yeah, Danielle was 24. And she was one of a group of four young Canadians who were probably on the trip of their lives.

They were going to Nairobi for a big UN environmental assembly. They had been chosen as delegates, as young environmentalists who were going to set the world on fire. She had lots of talents, a major in marine biology, and she was also very musical. And she recorded her own songs. And when I was visiting with the family recently, they took out their phones. It is haunting listening to this young voice. I, I follow, I follow you deep sea baby. I follow you, I, I follow. I follow you, dark dune honey.

And what did Danielle's parents tell you about how they think this has all been handled by Boeing? Danielle's dad is a engineer. He's pragmatic and analytical, except for on Father's Day this June when he took out last year's card and put it on the piano. But he said, you know, where was the oversight? And primarily, why did this happen twice? From what we read in the paper, there was the same mode of failure. And to me, that suggests that nothing was done. I asked him how he felt when the CEO of Boeing recently said,

we are very, very sorry for the lives lost in these two crashes, and then ended saying, Safety is sacred in this company. And our people who work in the factories, the engineers who design our airplanes, to all of us in every corner of this business, safety is simply the top priority in everything we do. Right, right. What was his response to that? Yeah, and Chris said... They're just words. What is their safety policy?

I'd like to know, because if they do put safety first, then the second crash would never have happened. And they can't get over that. They can't get over the fact that the first was tragic enough, but the second, why wasn't enough attention paid? Why wasn't the MAX 8 pulled out of the skies after the first crash? This all centers around this MCAS system, am I right? Yes, it was an automated software system in the MAX 8 plane. Correct me if I'm not understanding this properly, but the way I understand it is that these new planes had a larger engine. It required them to put the engine higher up on the plane, which had the effect of pitching the nose upwards.

So they created the software system, which then pitched the nose downwards. There's like speculation and allegations that the software itself was defective. I think the problem was in part that it was an automated system. And if you were in a crisis and unable to override that system successfully, that was a problem. And many pilots have spoken to that. So there's a lot of simulation going now with the exact circumstances of that flight. And pilots are now saying, even the best pilots on a good day would not have been able to rescue that plane given these circumstances. The miracle on the Hudson put Chesley Sullenberger's piloting skills to the test.

Today, as he brought his five decades of experience into the committee room, Sullenberger, or Sully as he's known, spoke out. I recently experienced all these warnings in a 737 MAX flight simulator during recreations of the accident flights. Even knowing what was going to happen, I could see how crews could have run out of time before they could have solved the problems. These six lawsuits that are now filed in U.S. federal court, what are these families alleging? They are alleging that Boeing was negligent, that it put profits ahead of safety when they allegedly rushed the MAX 8 through to market, perhaps because of stiff competition from Airbus. Their number one competitor. Yes. And they were looking for an aircraft which would be popular. They found one.

But there are questions, too, about the certification process. And Chris Moore was very strong on that. He said, where was the oversight? Why was this allowed to be certified when it appears that the Federal Aviation Agency may have offloaded some of the technical certification to Boeing because they had more expertise? In effect saying, was Boeing regulating itself? I think that's a failure on the whole airline industry. If you just ask the airline to certify their product or part of their product, that's not safe. I want to talk to you a little bit about what has been happening with Boeing since this crash. I understand that Boeing is now dealing with repairs of the MAX 8s. There are none in the air right now, but last Thursday, Airlines Around the World urged regulators to work together for a safe reentry of these planes.

And is it possible that they could be cleared to fly again soon? Depends what you mean by soon. I think there are many barriers and new ones pop up frequently. Boeing has said that they have performed a software upgrade. They also have likely amended the training requirements for the MAX 8. Those will have to be approved by the FAA. But just a few days ago, the FAA said it found a new potential risk in the MAX 8 that Boeing had to address before there could be any certification flight. And is this new risk related to the MCAS system or is it something else

entirely? It's not directly related to the crash. It's another issue, but could have similar problems in the cockpit. This issue of pilot responsibility is also something that came up in discussions about what happened. Did anyone lay any blame on the flight crew involved? None of the families did. In fact, the opposite. They rejected this was pilot error. And Paul Njerogi actually was quite animated and quite angry about the suggestion, the strategy by some that it could be pilot error. In effect, he was saying that when people speak about foreign pilots, which is a fallacy to me, you know, there's a tinge of inappropriate language there to begin with. But secondly, that it's not reasonable to think that we can put an aircraft in the sky

that only some pilots can maneuver and others can't. That airplanes go around the world and they have to have training that allows all pilots to be able to work the systems without fear of a crisis like this. It doesn't concern me about what Boeing can pay to the families of the victims. My concern is what laws can be made so that these individuals will not be allowed to make decisions that expose human life.

These lawsuits from the families from Canada, they're just part of Boeing's legal problems. Yes, there are dozens of lawsuits facing Boeing currently from families around the world. This was a global passenger list from shareholders, from 400 MAX 8 pilots. Plus, there are at least three federal U.S. federal agency inquiries, which are looking into the crash and as well the relationship with the FAA. So there's a lot of regulatory inquiry into these two crashes, and Boeing is going to have to answer for all of those.

Under this cloud, though, Boeing made its first tentative sale of the MAX 8s at the Paris Air Show recently. What does that tell you about how the company is doing? Well, it's an indication of how they're trying to come back. They have been meeting with airlines, with airline crews, with regulators to try to convince them that their product is safe. And this tentative intention for a sale of 200 MAX aircraft was a way that they could say, look, some airlines, and these were significant airlines, Iberia and British Airways, part of a conglomerate, some airlines are already reinvesting in our product. In essence, although it's premature, it was kind of a soft, we're coming back. Now, in fairness, this is an intention to purchase. It wasn't an

actual sale, but Boeing did parlay that into a vote of confidence. Lawsuits are exhausting and can be incredibly emotionally taxing. I am curious to know if you have any sense of how Boeing is responding to these lawsuits. What we do know that is Boeing has offered to go to mediation in these cases, which in non-legal terms is a very first step towards a possible settlement of these cases rather than going to trial. At this point, what I've been told is the lawyer said that many of his clients are very interested in going forward at least to the discovery stage where some documents have to be produced on either side. Boeing may indeed try to settle these cases rather than have to defend. Obviously, it's clear these families have a lot of questions for Boeing about accountability

and pursuing a lawsuit is one way to try and get that accountability. But I remember when we spoke, when we were in Ethiopia, these families were also dealing with other major hurdles, including just getting answers from people on the ground there about their loved ones' remains. We want to go home with them. That's the only way we can have closure. I cannot have any other closure. And what's happened since?

Not a lot. Grief is such a long process, and I think it's fair to say it's been delayed by the fact that they have not been able to get anything tangible from their families. They don't have a boarding pass. They don't have a piece of clothing. They certainly don't have remains. What's happening in Ethiopia is the DNA has been extracted from the remains. That DNA is being matched with samples that the families gave over, and they are trying to identify remains to people. Ethiopian Airlines recently warned that because of the

catastrophic nature of this crash, there may not be any remains for some people. And in mid-July, they're going to put up a website, a database, private and secure, with all the belongings that have been recovered. So it's quite conceivable that for some of these families, they might not be able to have anything to hold on to at the end of this. For others, it could be a wallet or an article of clothing. Yeah, and I think that many have told me that, you know, death is sacred. For many people, they need something to bury. And so in some cases, Danielle is an example. There hasn't been a funeral, and they actually had delayed a celebration of her life until sometime in July

because they needed to know that maybe something might come that they could bury. Giving a ceremony or having a funeral, you have to have a body. How could you have a ceremony when you didn't even have anything? You don't have anything except that in your heart that is gone, but there's nothing there. So it's just a long process, and it may be September before this identification happens. And, you know, one man we spoke to, Muhammad Ali, his sister was on the flight, and he described it very interestingly.

He said, you know, it's as if she's still flying around with nothing to bury. It's hard to close up that part and move on. If we can, you know, have a closure, put them, you know, somewhere and say, that's where she's finally, you know, laid pressed. To be honest, she's still flying. She left us, she's still on, she's on the plane to this point. We don't know what happened, right? Have any of the families gone back to visit the crash site? Not since the initial week or two, but, you know, they do want to go back. They said that. They also want, you know, that dusty field. It's a rutted, bumpy ride from Addis Ababa,

about two hours, but they, to them, that sacred ground, that's where their loved ones ended, and they want it turned into some kind of a permanent memorial, even just a plaque, a stone, something to say that lives were lost here. They haven't had any traction yet from the Ethiopian government. Perhaps it's too soon. Susan, can I ask you, I know you've been covering this story for many months now.

Is there anything in particular that haunts you when you think about this story? It haunts them. And it came up without me asking about it. It was the last six minutes. That flight took off from Addis Ababa and only managed to fly for six minutes. And during that six minutes, there were at least three torturers up and down. We know that because we can see the flight graph. So they know that the people most important to them knew something terrible was happening for six minutes.

So Clarice Moore asked about, was she crying out for me. How dark it is. Was she with someone? Was she thinking of me? Like was she suffering? I don't know. Paul Njorogi said the same thing. Did my children cry for me? I think about my wife a lot because she was there with the children and my mom-in-law. She knew they're going to die. Mixed up with that wondering is this sense of grief and guilt that they weren't able to save their families. And that aspect of I couldn't save them haunts all of them. Susan, thank you. You're welcome. So just one more note on Boeing today. The Washington Post dropped an investigation last week that chronicled what the paper says

is a history of the company failing to fix safety problems. Details include mechanics leaving tools inside plane wings or workers improperly installing wires that could cause fires. Boeing says it's addressing these concerns through a deal made with the Federal Aviation Agency, or the FAA, to improve its internal safety systems. This deal was made before Christmas 2018. That's all for today. I'm Jimmy Poisson.

Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was please read this

while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back. Gay Girl Gone. Available now.