Boeing, DOJ reach deal to avoid prosecution over 737 Max crashes

The U.S. Justice Department said Friday that it has reached a deal with Boeing that will allow the aircraft maker to avoid prosecution over two crashes of its 737 Max planes that killed 346 people.

The non-prosecution agreement would allow Boeing, a major military contractor and top U.S. exporter, to avoid being labeled a felon. The decision means Boeing won’t face trial as scheduled next month, as crash victims’ family members have urged for years.

The Department of Justice met with crash victims’ family members last week to discuss the potential deal.

In a court filing Friday the DOJ said it “is the Government’s judgment that the Agreement is a fair and just resolution that serves the public interest.”

The agreement “guarantees further accountability and substantial benefits from Boeing immediately, while avoiding the uncertainty and litigation risk presented by proceeding to trial.”

The DOJ said it intends to file a motion to dismiss the case once the “agreement in principle” is finalized, by no later than the end of next week.

Under the agreement, Boeing will have to “pay or invest” more than $1.1 billion, the DOJ said in its filing in federal court in Texas on Friday. That amount includes a $487.2 million criminal fine, though $243.6 million it already paid in an earlier agreement would be credited. It also includes $444.5 million for a new fund for crash victims, and $445 million more on compliance, safety and quality programs.

Boeing declined to comment.

The company has been trying for years to put the two crashes of its best-selling Max planes — a Lion Air flight in October 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines flight less than five months later — behind it. The Maxes were grounded worldwide for nearly two years after the second crash, a pause that gave rival Airbus a head start in recovering from the Covid pandemic.

But families of the crash victims have criticized previous agreements as sweetheart deals for Boeing, called for more accountability from the company and said its executives should stand trial. In 2022, a former chief technical pilot for Boeing was acquitted on fraud charges tied to the Max’s development.

Several of the victims’ family members issued a statement through their lawyer shortly after the court filing was released criticizing the deal and saying it set a troubling precedent for other large companies.

“This kind of non-prosecution deal is unprecedented and obviously wrong for the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history. My families will object and hope to convince the court to reject it,” said the families’ lawyer, Paul Cassell.

The Justice Department said relatives of more than 110 crash victims told the government they support the non-prosecution agreement or “support the Department’s efforts to resolve the case pre-trial more generally,” but added that others said they want the U.S. to take Boeing to trial and that they would litigate to dismiss the deal.

The aerospace giant reached a settlement in 2021 in the final days of the first Trump administration that shielded it from prosecution for three years.

Under that deal, Boeing agreed to pay a $2.51 billion fine to avoid prosecution. That included a $243.6 million criminal penalty, a $500 million fund for crash victims’ family members and $1.77 billion for its airline customers. The new fund will be on top of the $500 million that was already established.

That 2021 settlement was set to expire two days after a door panel blew out of a nearly new 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines on Jan. 5, 2024, after the aircraft left Boeing’s factory without key bolts installed.

But last year, U.S. prosecutors said Boeing violated the 2021 settlement, accusing the company of failing to set up and enforce a compliance and ethics program to detect violations of U.S. fraud laws.

Last July, toward the end of the Biden administration, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to the criminal fraud charge in a new settlement. A federal judge later rejected the plea deal, citing concerns with diversity, equity and inclusion requirements for choosing a corporate monitor.

Under that 2024 deal, Boeing would have faced a fine of up to $487.2 million, though the Justice Department recommended that the court credit Boeing with half that amount it paid under the previous agreement.

The U.S. had accused Boeing of conspiracy to defraud the government by misleading regulators about its inclusion of a flight-control system on the Max that was later implicated in the two crashes.

“Boeing’s employees chose the path of profit over candor by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 Max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception,” then-acting Assistant Attorney General David Burns of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said at the time of the 2021 deferred prosecution agreement.

Messages revealed in an investigation into the Max’s development showed the former top Boeing pilot who was found not guilty of fraud in 2022, Mark Forkner, told the FAA to delete the flight-control system known as MCAS from manuals and, in a separate email, he boasted about “jedi-mind tricking” regulators into approving the training material.

Lawyers for victims’ family members railed against last year’s preliminary plea deal, equating it to a slap on the wrist for the corporate giant, which recently won a contract worth billions to build the next-generation fighter jet and works on other military programs including outfitting two new presidential jets.