Boeing ordered to pay $29m to family of UN engineer killed in Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crash

Why a Chicago Court Ordered Boeing to Pay $29m Over Flight ET302

Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302 crashed on 10 March 2019, killing all 157 people aboard, including 21 United Nations employees travelling to the UN Environment Assembly. Most civil claims arising from the accident have been settled confidentially, but one case has now produced a public verdict: a federal court in Chicago has ordered Boeing to pay $29 million in damages to the family of Michael 'Mick' Ryan.

Ryan was an Irish engineer with the World Food Programme. The case, filed by his widow, opened on 3 August and concerned a 737 MAX 8 that had been delivered only months before the accident.

The ET302 crash followed another 737 MAX 8 disaster: Lion Air Flight 610 went down on 29 October 2018, killing 189 people. Boeing admitted in 2019 that the MCAS anti-stall software contributed to both accidents. Criminal prosecutions against Boeing over the two crashes were abandoned in November 2025.

Civil cases have nevertheless continued. In November 2025, the first civil trial linked to the crashes ended with a $28.45 million jury award to a victim's widower. In May, the family of Samya Stumo, a 24-year-old American, obtained $49.5 million. Boeing's lawyer Dan Webb said in court that the company agreed on the need for substantial compensation, while disputing the exact amount. After the Ryan verdict, only two civil complaints related to ET302 remain open; the last Lion Air claim was resolved at the end of February.

What the Ryan Verdict Means for Boeing's Remaining 737 MAX Liability

A New Damage Benchmark After the Ryan Case

The $29 million award adds another public data point to the civil costs of the 737 MAX crashes. It sits between the $28.45 million first jury award and the $49.5 million obtained for the family of Samya Stumo. The differences are not explained in the court report, but they typically reflect factors such as the victim's age, earnings, family dependants and the jury's assessment, rather than a change in Boeing's underlying responsibility, which the company has already acknowledged through its MCAS admission.

Boeing's Remaining Civil Exposure Is Now Narrow

For Boeing, the legal significance of this verdict is less the dollar amount than the shrinking number of unresolved claims. According to the report, only two civil complaints tied to ET302 now remain open, and the final Lion Air claim closed at the end of February. With criminal proceedings already abandoned in November 2025, the public adversarial tail of the 737 MAX crash liability is now small, though the confidential settlements reached in most earlier cases mean the total historical cost remains opaque.

The 737 MAX Legacy Still Echoes in Court

The case does not introduce a new safety or regulatory finding. But each civil trial revisits the MCAS failures and the two crashes, keeping the reputational cost of the 737 MAX episode in public view. For Boeing, that is now a communication and legacy issue rather than a sign of new operational or certification risk, at least on the facts reported.

What Boeing and Investors Should Take From the $29m Verdict

For Boeing's legal and finance teams: the $29m Ryan award, following the $28.45m and $49.5m verdicts, is a concrete benchmark for the two remaining ET302 complaints and can be used to test settlement ranges against figures that are already public.

• For investors: the individual amounts are small relative to Boeing's overall litigation burden, but the two open ET302 cases remain the outstanding public civil tail; their potential cost is bounded by the benchmark verdicts, while total historical cost is hidden by confidential settlements.
• For aerospace insurers and litigation teams: the verdicts show that courts continue to award substantial damages in MCAS-related deaths even after criminal liability ended, with material variation between individual cases making case-level facts decisive.