A flight-control feature automatically activated before an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max nose-dived into the ground, according to investigators. The preliminary findings, reported by TheWall Street Journal, are the strongest indication yet that the automated system, called MCAS, misfired in both the Ethiopian Airlines flight this month and a Lion Air flight that crashed in Indonesia in October. Investigators have been homing in on MCAS as a potential cause in both of the crashes. Ethiopia’s transport minister previously said readings from black-box data showed “clear similarities were noted” between both doomed flights. Meanwhile, a lawsuit against Boeing was filed in U.S. federal court Thursday in the first case regarding the Ethiopia crash. The lawsuit was filed in Chicago by the family of Jackson Musoni, a citizen of Rwanda, and alleges that Boeing had defectively designed the automated flight-control system.
