Boeing agrees to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges related to the 737 Max crashes

The world’s second-largest aircraft manufacturer, Boeing, has agreed to plead guilty to a criminal charge of fraud two 737 Max crashes killing more than 300 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia between 2018 and 2019. The proposed plea deal still needs a judge’s approval.

Boeing would agree to pay a $243.6 million criminal fine as part of the deal with the Justice Department. The company would also invest an additional $455 million in its compliance and safety programs and agree to an independent, government-appointed compliance monitor to oversee its operations for at least three years. Although families of the crash victims criticized the deal as an ineffective minor punishmentthe federal government suggested that Boeing employees could still be on the hook for future charges.

By pleading guilty to criminal fraud charges filed by the DOJ earlier this yearBoeing will avoid a criminal trial that could have led to much harsher penalties. But additional criminal charges against Boeing executives or employees could still be on the table. The most recent settlement, This was evident from court documents on Sunday, are specifically related to misconduct surrounding the 737 Max crashes. That means Boeing could still face penalties for alleged misconduct by critics whistleblowers can have say contributed to a wave of high-profile security incidents in the past months. The DOJ said in its filing that it would provide “no immunity” to individual employees of the company as part of the agreement.

Boeing could pay a total of up to $487 million in fines as part of the new plea deal. That’s a long way from the reported $24.8 billion families of accident victims had hoped to force the company to make restitution. The victims’ families are expected to publicly oppose the deal. Paul Cassell, an attorney representing some of the families suing Boeing, told CNN the agreement amounts to a “sweetheart deal” for Boeing. Erin Applebaum, another attorney representing crash victims, described the deal as nothing more than a “slap on the wrist” that would “do nothing to bring about meaningful change within the company,” during a recent meeting. interview with Bloomberg.

A Boeing spokesperson confirmed this Popular science that the company had “reached an agreement in principle” with the DOJ. The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The agreement marks Boeing’s second deal with DOJ in three years

The criminal charges underlying the most recent agreement date back to a two 737 Max planes crashed in 2018 and 2019 killing 346 passengers and crew. The public reaction after the crashes led to Boeing ground the planes for twenty months. Investigators looking into the events at the time revealed that the crashes were linked to previously undisclosed software called MCAS, which was intended to adjust for a design flaw in the planes. Data from one of the flight data recorders of one of the affected 737 Max planes, commonly referred to as a ‘black box’, reportedly showed evidence of pilots physically fighting the MCAS system in a desperate attempt to prevent the planes from nosediving. Frantic audio recordings taken from the cockpit reportedly suggest the pilots did not know how to handle the faulty software.

Boeing eventually admitted that its employees had withheld information about the design flaw from the Federal Aviation Administration, leading the DOJ in 2021 to accuse the company of one count of conspiracy to defraud regulators. At the time, Boeing struck a deal with federal prosecutors and agreed to pay $2.5 billion to resolve these problems. However, a more recent DOJ investigation into the company following a series of safety accidents found that Boeing may have violated parts of the 2021 agreement, which would have opened them up to additional prosecution. This week’s plea deal would settle that dispute.

But Boeing is not yet free from potential legal hurdles. The aircraft manufacturer came under renewed scrutiny earlier this year after a door plug flew off an Alaskan Airlines plane during flight. Since then, passengers aboard Boeing flights have had a tough time injury-proof nose dives, jarring wheel releasesAnd planes rolling off runways. An investigation into the door plug problem found that Boeing Dawn suppliers had used dish soap and hotel key cards to secure the door seal, a practice the company has since defended as a “innovative approach.” Making matters worse is a new whistleblower complaint previously filed against the company This year, Boeing’s main supplier claims that aircraft bodies are leaving factory floors with serious defects. In total, Boeing had that Reportedly has been the subject of 32 whistleblower claims in just three years.