A subcommittee formed to handle legal issues related to Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 that crashed early last month has started the process of crafting a strategy to quantify the loss incurred to proceed with a compensation claim.

Formed under a steering committee chaired by Dagmawit Moges, minister of Transport, the team is led by the Office of the Attorney General.

The subcommittee will be working to determine claim losses and compensations. The committee is one of six subcommittees formed under the auspices of the steering committee immediately following the crash.

What damages require compensation, who is eligible for compensation, what the level of compensation is and who is the responsible party for any eventual claims will be investigated and addressed, according to Muse Yiheyies, communications director of the Ministry of Transport.

The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau of Ethiopia, which has been leading the investigation under the Ministry of Transport, had released a preliminary report that indicates that the pilots on command followed the proper procedures, but uncommanded nose-diving was encountered before the crash.

“Shortly after takeoff, the Angle of Attack Sensor’s recorded value became erroneous, and the left stick shaker activated and remained active until near the end of the flight,” reads the preliminary report. “The airspeed and altitude values from the left air data system began deviating from the corresponding right side values.”

The 33-page investigation report has also established that the pilots were certified, the aircraft was issued an airworthiness directive, the takeoff was proper, and the cockpits followed the manufacturers’ and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) manual to manage the emergency.

The plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Bole International Airport on its scheduled flight to Nairobi, Kenya. On board were 149 passengers from 35 different countries, the pilot, the co-pilot, crew members and a security person. None survived the crash.

The flight took off on March 10, 2019, at 8:38am under the command of the 29-year-old captain, Yared Getachew, and his co-pilot, Ahmednur Mohammed. While Yared had logged 8,122 hours of flight time, the first officer had flown a total of 361 hours, according to the preliminary report.

Even though the preliminary report did not clearly mention that the nose-down was caused by the Manoeuvring Characteristic Augmentation System (MCAS), an automated safety system designed to prevent the plane from stalling or losing lift, industry insiders believe that the system was the cause of the crash.

This system was previously reported as a cause of Lion Air’s plane crash, which claimed 189 lives five months ago when Lion Air Flight 610 fell into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff from Jakarta, Indonesia last October.

“I am not surprised [the MCAS is not explicitly mentioned in the preliminary report],” Tewolde GebreMariam, CEO of Ethiopian Airlines, told CNN, adding that the accident investigation will continue with detailed analysis until the full and detailed report is released after a year.

“We all know from the Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) that there were uncommanded nose-down automatic activations that occurred three times in the plane,” Tewolde said.

The preliminary report has also forwarded two safety recommendations for Boeing and aviation authorities. It advised the aircraft manufacturer to revise the control system, while aviation authorities were requested to make sure the control system has been adequately addressed.

On the same date the preliminary report was released, Boeing which has booked nearly 5,000 orders for the model and has already supplied 350 to 54 operators around the world, issued an apology. The company also announced that they have been working on software updates to fix the problem.

“We at Boeing are sorry for the lives lost in the recent 737 Max accidents,” said Dennis Muilenburg, CEO of Boeing.

“We now know that the recent accidents were caused by a chain of events,” reads a statement from Boeing, “with a common chain link being erroneous activation of the aircraft’s MCAS function.”

The statement adds that “we have the responsibility to eliminate this risk, and we know how to do it.”