Father of Exmouth woman killed in plane crash ‘hopeful’ after US judge ‘crime victims’ ruling

The father of an Exmouth woman who died in a Boeing 737 MAX crash has said that he feels "hopeful" after a US judge ruled people who died in two crashes involving the aircraft are legally considered "crime victims".

Joanna Toole, who grew up in Exmouth, was killed in March 2019 along with all 156 others when Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302 crashed six minutes after takeoff.

The crash was one of two involving Boeing's 737 MAX aircraft, and led to it being grounded worldwide. The other took place in 2018 in Indonesia 13 minutes after takeoff, killing 189 people.

Both incidents were linked to a safety system in the aircraft called MCAS, which would push the nose of the plane down to counteract the plane's tendency to pitch up due to the higher position of the engines on its wings.

The ruling was made by US District Judge Reed O'Connor on Friday 21 October. He said that the pilots would have received adequate training about the MCAS system, had Boeing not left out key information about it to the FAA.

The MCAS system would push the plane's nose down to counteract the aircraft's tendency to pitch up due to its higher engine positions (By LLBG Spotter - Ethiopian Airlines ET-AVJ takeoff from TLV, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77232751)

Joanna's father Adrian Toole, reacting to the ruling, said: "What this means in practice for us, nobody knows yet but I'm hopeful that it will give us an opportunity, until now denied, of telling the public what these losses have done to us.

"Although the families are pleased that we are now being formally recognised as crime victims, it is disappointing that we have had to pursue such a complex legal challenge to even achieve that status.

"Although negligence has been admitted, the criminal justice system in the US was not destined to find any individuals actually responsible, moreover in originally accepting that my daughter was not a victim of crime, the Department of Justice had acquiesced in blocking the bereaved families from any participation in the process. 

"The most important thing for us has always been that there is accountability and that lessons are learned so that the negligence that caused these crashes will not happen again.

"Determined campaigning and legal action by the families and their advisors is winning against corporate manoeuvring."

Joanna's family are still waiting for an inquest to take place, which has been delayed by a lack of an accident report from the Ethiopian government.

READ MORE: U.S. judge: Passengers in fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes are 'crime victims'