Families of air crash victims in Ethiopia seek more than money to heal

Last updated on September 11th, 2021 at 03:00 pm

A year after losing his wife in the Boeing Co. 737 Max crash in Ethiopia, it’s the lack of information about what happened that is prolonging Bayihe Demissie’s grief.

This week, about 500 family members of victims of the disaster will gather at the crash site outside the capital, Addis Ababa, to commemorate the first anniversary of the tragedy. As a families’ representative, Bayihe, 35, will seek to console many who are still waiting for answers about what brought down the Ethiopian Airlines Group flight moments after takeoff, killing all 157 people on board.

“It is not the money that heals you,” Bayihe, a father of a two-year-old boy said in an interview, while sobbing intermittently. “What the families want is clear information.”

Ethiopian authorities plan to release an interim report this week that excludes information from “a lot” of investigations that are continuing, Amdye Ayalew, the nation’s chief crash investigator, said on Feb. 21. That means the statement will likely lack comprehensive findings about the roles played by Boeing, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration or Ethiopian Airlines in the disaster. Investigators have tentatively concluded that the plane’s design caused the crash, Bloomberg reported on Friday.