IT is more than four years since a Boeing 737 Max airliner crashed into remote farmland outside the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
One hundred and fifty seven people were killed. On Monday, an inquest in Horsham, West Sussex will finally take place into the deaths of three of the British citizens who were on board.
For relatives of those who died, it is a landmark moment.
Lawyers for the families will be seeking a verdict of unlawful killing.
The inquest will look into the deaths of humanitarian workers Sam Pegram and Oliver Vick, as well as sustainability campaigner Joanna Toole.
“Sam was just a joy to have in your life,” his mother Deborah says, blinking back tears. “Right from when he was a little boy, he wanted to help people.”
Sitting at home with her husband Mark and her other son Tom, she struggles to find the right words to tell me about the wound that opened up in their lives when the plane went down.
She talks about 25-year-old Sam’s smile, and his wicked sense of humour.
“He just made our lives better, really… and he’s left a really big hole.”
The family have spent the past four years fighting legal battles, trying to gain some kind of justice for Sam, as well as to obtain compensation.
Now they’re simply exhausted.
“It’s just been a constant struggle,” says Mark. “I mean, on top of the grief and the normal things that you deal with having lost somebody, you to have to continually relive it.
“You have to tell that story to your lawyers, to opposition lawyers, to a forensic psychologist… going right into the depths of what you were feeling the day you found out.
“It’s taken its toll.”
Flight ET302 crashed because of a design flaw.
