The Justice Department plans to allow Boeing to avoid a criminal trial if it agrees to plead guilty to a fraud charge stemming from two fatal crashes of its 737 Max more than five years ago, according to two attorneys for the families of the crash victims.
Federal officials shared details of the offer in a call with families Sunday afternoon and said the Justice Department had not yet presented the deal to Boeing, according to attorneys Paul G. Cassell and Mark Lindquist.
The terms include a fine of nearly $244 million, a new investment in safety improvements, three years of scrutiny by an outside monitor and a meeting between Boeing’s board of directors and the victims’ families, said Cassell, a professor. of law from the University of Utah.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while Boeing declined to comment.
Cassell, who represents more than a dozen families, said he and the families found the settlement “scandalous” and fell far short of what they had sought. He described the offer as a “favorable agreement” because it would not force Boeing to admit fault in the deaths of the 346 people who died in crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia in late 2018 and early 2019.
“The families will vigorously oppose this plea agreement,” Cassell said in a statement. “The memory of the 346 innocent people killed by Boeing demands more justice than this.”
The Justice Department said it had planned to notify Boeing of its offer after the call, Cassell said.
According to the lawyers, the terms being offered to Boeing would update a 2021 agreement that resolved the criminal charge accusing the aerospace giant of conspiring to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration. The new deal would require Boeing to plead guilty to that charge.
The 2021 criminal charge focused on two employees accused of withholding information from the FAA about changes made to software known as MCAS, which was later implicated in the crashes.
Under the previous settlement, the company agreed to pay $500 million to the victims’ families. It also agreed to pay more than $1.7 billion to its customers because they were unable to receive deliveries of the Max during a 20-month global ban on the plane.
In May, the Justice Department determined that Boeing had violated the agreement by failing to adequately prevent subsequent violations of U.S. anti-fraud laws in its operations. In a statement at the time, Boeing said it believed it had met the terms of the previous agreement.
In weighing how to punish Boeing for the accidents, the Justice Department faced competing pressures to hold Boeing accountable for its failures without harming the company, which plays an important role in the country’s economy and national security.
The 2021 settlement angered families of crash victims, who have long argued that Boeing and its executives should face greater consequences, including a public trial. Many of those families have reached civil settlements with the company, although a handful of them are pursuing civil damage lawsuits that are scheduled to begin later this year.
In 2022, a Texas jury acquitted a former Boeing technical pilot, Mark A. Forkner, of defrauding two of the company’s clients, in the only criminal case the federal government brought against an individual connected to the crashes.
The Justice Department has also opened a criminal investigation into Boeing over a January flight in which a panel blew up on a Max jet operated by Alaska Airlines. No major injuries were reported, but the incident revived concerns among lawmakers and the public about the quality of Boeing planes.
Marcos Walker contributed with reports.
