Wednesday 01 / October / 2025
Washington: Two families have filed lawsuits against Boeing in Chicago over the 737 MAX crash in Ethiopia that killed 346 people.
One of the plaintiffs, Manant Vaidya, lost his father Pannagesh Vaidya, mother Hansini Vaidya, sister Kosha Vaidya, brother-in-law Prerit Dixit and two nieces, 14-year-old Ashka Dixit and 13-year-old Anushka Dixit in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March.
"I lost three generations of my family, my parents, my sister, my nieces. If a person lost just one life, their whole life is shattered. But right now with me, I'm more like, I don't know. I'm completely lost right now," said Vaidya at a news conference in downtown Chicago.
Paul Njoroge, another plaintiff, lost his wife Caroline Karanja, their three children seven-year-old Ryan, four-year-old Kelly, and nine-month-old Rubi, as well as his mother-in-law Anne Karanja in the crash.
"I stay up all night crying, thinking of the horror that they must have endured as pilots struggled to keep the plane flying for six minutes," he said. "The terror that my wife must have experienced with little Rubi on her lap ... Our two children beside her, crying for their daddy, my mom in law, feeling helplessness, those six minutes will forever be embedded in my mind. I was not there to help them. I couldn't save them."
The lawsuits were filed on behalf of both families by Clifford Law Offices of Chicago and Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy of San Francisco.
The complaint alleges negligence as well as breach of warranty, strict liability, failure to warn and civil conspiracy. They were filed against Boeing, which is based in Chicago, and Rosemount Aerospace, Inc. of Minnesota.
Separate claims were also filed against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on behalf of the families.
Kevin Durkin, a partner at Clifford Law Offices, promised that if Boeing denies its negligence in the crash, his firm would "seek every single email, text message that was between them and the FAA".
The families' lawsuit was filed in the federal district court in Chicago.
Investigators are focusing on alleged problems with the automated flight-control system called Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). They are also looking into possible connections between Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 and Lion Air Flight 610, another 737 MAX that crashed into the Java Sea on 29 October 2018.
In a written statement published earlier, Boeing President and CEO Dennis Muilenburg said, "We at Boeing are sorry for the lives lost in the recent 737 MAX accidents ... All of us feel the immense gravity of these events across our company and recognize the devastation of the families and friends of the loved ones who perished."
"We've had teams of our top engineers and technical experts working tirelessly in collaboration with the Federal Aviation Administration and our customers to finalise and implement a software update that will ensure accidents like that of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 never happen again," the statement read.
