FAMILY of the late Lahinch native Micheál ‘Mick’ Ryan have been awarded $29m (€25m) in damages from Boeing.
In December 2021, Mick’s wife Naoise Connolly Ryan filed a US court motion over the February 2019 Boeing 737 MAX crash which claimed Mick’s life and that of all 157 people on board.
A Chicago jury awarded $29 million (€25 million) in damages to Mick’s family.
Father of two Mick was one of the final remaining civil suits pending against Boeing following the pair of deadly MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that together claimed 346 lives.
The vast majority of claims have been settled out of court with undisclosed terms, but Ms Connolly Ryan’s attorney Steven Marks had described his client as “committed to seeking accountability and justice from a jury and not accepting money from Boeing directly”.
An offer of $1.4m made from the crash victim fund was previously rejected by Naoise. She stated in December 2021, “It’s blood money. This isn’t about money. I say this all the time, it’s about truth, accountability, and real justice”.
Boeing has apologised for the crashes and acknowledged that anti-stall software was implicated in both incidents. In May, a Chicago jury awarded $49.5m in damages to the family of Samya Stumo, a 24-year-old American who was killed on the same flight.
The 157 victims included people from 35 countries. The flight, which was bound for the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, came down near the town of Bishoftu, 50km southeast of Addis Abada. The jet left the airport at 8.38am local time on 10 March 2019 before losing contact with the control tower at 8.44am. The airline’s chief executive said the pilot, who had an “excellent flying record”, reported difficulties and had been cleared to turn back. The aircraft was just a few months old, having taken its first flight at the end of October. Its last maintenance was on 4 February 2019 and it had flown just 1,200 hours.
Aged 39 at the time of his death, Mick was a senior humanitarian worker with the United Nations. He dedicated his life to humanitarian work overseas helping people in need in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Liberia, and the world’s largest refugee camp in Myanmar. Mick worked as the deputy chief engineer with the United Nations World Food Programme.
From Attychristoria in Lahinch, Mick lived with his wife and children in Cork City. He had been based in the Rome headquarters of the UN World Food Programme and the family were due to relocate to Italy in March 2019. He is the son of Christina a retired teacher at Scoil Mhuire, Ennistymon and Jack an accountant who died in 2013 and a brother of Cristin, Siobhan and Tiernan.
In 2020, Mick was posthumously named the Humanitarian of the Year by the Irish Red Cross.
