As a federal judge in Texas mulls accepting Boeing’s guilty plea in the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into the fatal 737 Max crashes, families continue to live with daily reminders of those they lost because of software failures that the company initially ignored.
“You lose a child, and it’s an amputation of who you are,” Michael Stumo told The Epoch Times.
His daughter, Samya Rose Stumo, was 24 when she and 156 others died on Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 on March 10, 2019, after a Boeing 737 Max 8 stalled midair when its flight control software—the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS)—activated soon after takeoff, bringing the plane down.
The disaster occurred just five months after MCAS caused Lion Air flight 610 to plummet into Indonesia’s Java Sea 13 minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 people on board.
Critically, that agreement also required Boeing to stay in compliance for three years past the date it was signed, which would have ended on Jan. 7, just two days after an incident in which a door panel ripped off midair during an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 flight.
As part of the guilty plea, Boeing will have to pay an additional $243.6 million fine, the same amount that it paid in 2021 as part of the original deferred prosecution agreement. Boeing will also have to invest at least $455 million in safety and compliance programs and undergo three years of independent monitoring of its safety and quality control if U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor accepts the arrangement.
Under the deal, Boeing does not receive immunity for incidents after the 737 crashes, including the Alaska Airlines door panel incident, nor does it shield any current or former Boeing employees.
The lawyers for the crash victims’ families are pleading with the judge to throw out the guilty plea and force Boeing into a public trial, while the DOJ is defending its deal with one of the U.S. government’s longest-running contractors.
“The plea deal fails to hold Boeing accountable for the deaths of 346 people in the crashes of two of its defective airplanes, which were allowed to fly as a result of its crime,” Tracy A. Brammeier, one of the attorneys representing the victims’ families, told The Epoch Times.
Stumo, who for five years has been forced to repeatedly relive the loss of his daughter, said the thought that the world’s second-largest airplane manufacturer will escape a trial is untenable.
“It’s a weak slap on the wrist for one of the biggest corporate death cases in U.S. history,” Stumo said.
It’s also a reminder of what the company’s negligence took from him—a “brilliant, charismatic, and beautiful” young woman who Stumo says taught herself to read by age 4 and started college at age 14. Working as an analyst for the ThinkWell Institute at the time of her death, Samya was about to start in a position at the organization that most are not offered until after age 30, Stumo said.
“It’s just crushing. It’s like your internal organs and emotion and mind and brain and soul just have this excruciating weight, and you just stumble around trying to get going,” Stumo said.
“And we have to get up and fight immediately on this, but it’s just this weight that you can’t figure out.”
Victim Families at Odds With DOJ
The 2018 and 2019 737 Max crashes resulted from incorrect activation of Boeing’s MCAS flight control software during takeoff, which can happen if an angle-of-attack sensor signals to the computer that the plane is at the wrong ascent angle.The DOJ, in turn, accused Boeing of withholding information on the flight control system—absent on older 737 jets—from FAA regulators, airlines, and pilots. The company did not address the issue with MCAS until the Ethiopian Airlines flight disaster, five months after the Lion Air crash.
Boeing has defended its use of the software, initially blaming two of its technical pilots for concealing information on MCAS from federal regulators. The company has also denied violating the 2021 deferred prosecution agreement.
“It holds Boeing to account for the most serious, readily provable offense—conspiracy to obstruct and impede the lawful operation of the Federal Aviation Administration Aircraft Evaluation Group (‘FAA AEG’), a federal felony—and for breaching the terms of its prior Deferred Prosecution Agreement (‘DPA’) with the Government,” the agency wrote.
The DOJ said that the $455 million that Boeing must invest in safety and compliance “will directly benefit the public by reducing the risk of the recurrence of Boeing’s fraudulent misconduct.”
“The parties thus place the Court in a take-it-or-leave-it position. Rather than ignore the truth, the Court should ‘leave it’ and reject this rotten plea,” the attorneys wrote.
“And with the deaths properly in mind, a host of features in the proposed plea agreement are revealed to be inadequate, such as its misleading guidelines calculations, paltry fine, non-transparent corporate monitor, insufficient remedial measures, and uncertain restitution awards. For all these reasons, the Court should reject the proposed plea.”
Cassell, who previously called Boeing’s 2021 criminal settlement with the DOJ a “sweetheart deal,” told The Epoch Times that the families want the judge to “reject this plea and simply set the case for trial.”
Applebaum told The Epoch Times that a trial would finally cause the aerospace manufacturer to focus more on safety.
“Minimal fines and vague improvements to its safety and compliance programs are not significant enough to effectuate real change within the company,” she said, adding that rejecting the plea deal would “send a strong message to the DOJ that justice must be blind.”
Brammeier said, “A misleading and unfair deal like this one allows a criminal to dodge true justice for the victims’ families and allows a powerful corporation to escape full punishment for its crime.”
Stumo took issue with the fact that the victims’ families have no say in the independent monitor who will oversee Boeing for the next three years to ensure compliance with DOJ orders, as the court is allowing the agency to choose the monitor with the company’s input. He also said he is concerned that the millions spent on safety compliance improvements may not produce the intended reforms.
“It has to be real. Can’t be what [Boeing has] done in the past,” Stumo said.
Government Contract Issues
Even if O’Connor accepts the plea deal, Boeing’s pleading guilty to defrauding the U.S. government could have long-term consequences on the company’s status as a notable government contractor.In 2023, the company’s contracts accounted for 37 percent of its annual revenue. That included foreign military sales through the U.S. government after Boeing secured $14.8 billion in Defense Department contracts in 2022.
Vikramaditya Khanna, a law professor at the University of Michigan, told The Epoch Times that in some company plea deals, a “criminal conviction for fraud may well lead to debarment from contracting with the government for some period of time, which for a firm like Boeing ... would be a very significant matter.”
He said that government contractors must be “presently responsible” for obtaining contract agreements and awards and that any criminal conviction is likely to be viewed negatively.
Boeing, however, could seek waivers from individual agencies that can make their own assessments, as they may have different guidelines for determining whether the company is still eligible.
“A debarment may be based on convictions, civil judgments, or the agency’s independent evidence proving by a preponderance of the evidence that a company or individual were involved in fraudulent conduct on public contracts, such as contract and financial assistance fraud, embezzlement, theft, forgery, bribery, poor performance, non-performance or false statements as well as other causes,” the agency wrote.
Regardless of what the court decides for Boeing, Stumo is adamant that changes in the company need to be legitimate.
“These planes go for up to 40 years and cannot fail,“ he said. ”That’s the business they’re in. That’s the original Boeing, and if they can’t do it, they’ve got to find someone who can. It’s all about their leadership. That’s the No. 1 issue.”
