Families sue Boeing over Madrid air crash (Roundup)

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain - Three families which lost seven of their members in the August 20 crash that killed 154 people at Madrid airport are suing Boeing and McDonnell Douglas for damages, their legal representative said Thursday. Boeing subsidiary McDonnell Douglas made the Spanair MD-82 jetliner that crashed off the runway after take-off. The legal complaint lodged in Illinois in the United States was based on electrical and handbook errors detected in analyses of 15 planes in the MD-80 series that had crashed, said Manuel von Ribbeck of the US firm Ribbeck Law. Three MD-80 planes had crashed over the past 11 months, von Ribbeck said. The accidents occurred in Phuket in Thailand, Isparta in Turkey, and Madrid. The lawyer said Boeing was being asked to give detailed information about the manufacture, maintenance, purchases and leasing of the Madrid crash plane. The claimants were two Spanish and one Swedish citizen. Von Ribbeck said he was meeting with more victims' families and that more lawsuits could follow. Human error may have contributed to the accident, but cannot have been its only cause, a Spanish expert meanwhile said. Felipe Laorden of the Official College of Commercial Aviation Pilots (Copac) was commenting on a report in US newspaper the Wall Street Journal that the MD-82 did not have its wing flaps, which provide extra lift, fully extended. A loud horn designed to alert the crew to equipment problems apparently did not sound, sources familiar with the investigation were quoted as saying. Laorden said the plane's alert system may have had 'a mechanical or design error.' It had been suspected that the accident was linked to a fire in the engine or the plane's reverse thrust, but the Wall Street Journal said the engines appeared to have been working properly. The plane should have had a second alert system, Copac representative Manuel Chamorro said, explaining that such recommendations had been issued after a MD-82 crashed in Detroit in 1987, also killing 154 people. The pilots' union Sepla meanwhile criticized leaks to the press about the investigation, saying the work of the investigating commission should be confidential.