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.
USA
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