Families of Ethiopian Air Crash to Hold Silent Protest At Boeing Annual Shareholders Meeting

Friends and family of those who perished in the March 10, 2019 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 plan a silent protest at the Boeing annual meeting of shareholders on April 29.

The meeting is to be held at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

One passenger on the ill-fated flight was Samya Stumo, a health financing analyst, who had been scheduled to fly from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, Kenya. She was en route to Kenya and Uganda to work on a Gates Foundation health initiative.

Her uncle, Tarek Milleron, an ecologist, called for the protest and will participate along with other family members.

“We are faced with a choice of giving Boeing a free pass at their annual meeting and having no presence – or having even one person there, and that’s a very big difference,” Milleron told Frequent Business Traveler in an interview.

At least 11 families who could not attend asked for photographs of the family member killed in the crash to be displayed, Milleron said.

“This is a beginning for us of making sure there are some faces of victims there.”

Boeing, meanwhile, has come under intense scrutiny in the days and weeks following the crash. It has halted deliveries of the beleaguered 737 Max, suspended share buybacks, and pulled its 2019 financial forecasts. There have been calls for the company to split the roles of CEO and chairman of the board in the wake of the incident.

(Photo: Accura Media Group)