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 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.
The claimants were two Spanish citizens 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 the US newspaper 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 was quoted as saying.
Laorden said the plane's alert system may have had "a mechanical or design error."
It had initially been suspected that the problem lie with the plane's reverse thrust, but Wall Street Journal said the engines appeared to have been working properly.
