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Boeing has reached a last-minute settlement to avoid a civil trial that was due to start Monday over the fatal 2019 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX plane, the plaintiffs' lawyers said.
The Chicago trial was to feature two plaintiffs who lost family members in the calamity, but the Clifford law firm told AFP that both cases were settled on Sunday evening.
The Boeing plane crashed on March 10, 2019, just six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa on its way to Kenya, killing all 157 people on board.
Relatives of 155 of the victims had sued Boeing between April 2019 and March 2021 for wrongful death, negligence and other charges.
A source familiar with the case told AFP that 18 complaints against Boeing were still open as of late last month.
Multiple judicial sources told AFP that Sunday's deal meant that four more cases had been settled since then.
The Ethiopian Airlines disaster followed another fatal crash involving a MAX plane -- that of a Lion Air jet that crashed in Indonesia in October 2018, killing all 189 people on board.
Boeing said, "We are deeply sorry to all who lost loved ones on Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. "
"We made an upfront commitment to fully and fairly compensate the families and accepted legal responsibility for the accidents. We will continue to work to fairly resolve the claims of the family members."
US Judge Jorge Alonso has divided the Boeing lawsuits into groups of five or six plaintiffs, annulling a potential trial only if all the suits settle.
Alonso plans at least two more rounds of trials in 2025, to begin on July 14 and November 3.
In November, the aviation giant reached a last-minute agreement with the family of a woman killed in the crash.
Boeing also received dozens of complaints from Lion Air family victims. As of the end of March, just one case remained open.
Boeing's settlements with civil plaintiffs have been confidential.
A Boeing lawyer said during an October hearing that the US manufacturer has "accepted responsibility for the MAX crashes publicly and in civil litigation because the design of the MCAS... contributed to these events. "
The MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) flight stabilizing software was implicated in both the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air crashes.
The disasters led to congressional hearings, with irate lawmakers demanding answers, and to leadership shake-ups at the aviation company. The entire 737 MAX fleet was grounded for more than 20 months.
Boeing later revised the MCAS program under scrutiny from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which cleared the jets to resume service in November 2020.
The latest settlements come as Boeing also faces a potential criminal trial in June in Texas over the MAX.
That trial follows a January 2021 deferred prosecution agreement between Boeing and the US Justice Department regarding the two MAX crashes.
In May 2024, the Justice Department notified the court that Boeing had violated terms of the accord. That came after a January 2024 incident in which an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX was forced to make an emergency landing when a panel blew out mid-flight.
US District Judge Reed O'Connor ordered a jury trial from June 23 after throwing out a proposed settlement between Boeing and the Justice Department earlier.
© Agence France-Presse
