Boeing Crash Victim Families Seek $24 Billion Fine, ‘Aggressive’ Prosecution

Family and friends who lost loved ones in the Boeing 737 Max crash in Ethiopia on March 10, 2019, hold a protest in front of Boeing headquarters in Arlington, Va., to mark the four-year anniversary of the accident on March 10, 2023. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

An attorney representing family members who lost loved ones in two fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes said on June 19 that in addition to criminal prosecution, the plane manufacturer should be subject to a fine of more than $24 billion.

Attorney Paul Cassell wrote a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) on June 19, in which he laid out the families’ views on how Boeing should be subjected to the multibillion-dollar fine and an “aggressive criminal prosecution,” while calling on the DOJ to offer no concessions if the company requests plea negotiations.

“Because Boeing’s crime is the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history, a maximum fine of more than $24 billion is legally justified and clearly appropriate,” Mr. Cassell wrote, adding that between $14 billion and $22 billion of the fine could be suspended if those funds are instead devoted to quality control and safety measures.

Mr. Cassell wrote that Boeing’s board of directors should be ordered to meet with the families of the victims of what he said should be labeled as a “crime” rather than a “crash,” and that the DOJ should launch criminal prosecutions against Boeing executives who were in charge at the time of the deadly crashes.

Neither Boeing nor the DOJ responded to requests for comment.

The Crashes

The crash victims’ families’ demand for the massive fine and criminal prosecution of Boeing stems from the DOJ’s finding that the company had breached a 2021 agreement that shielded the planemaker from criminal prosecution over the fatal 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.

Investigations into the two crashes—one in Indonesia and the other in Ethiopia—zeroed in on the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which automatically adjusts the flight controls to prevent the plane from stalling.

An Ethiopian government report on the Ethiopian Airlines crash laid the blame squarely on Boeing, blaming a single faulty sensor for triggering “repetitive and uncommanded airplane-nose-down inputs” from the MCAS that led to an “unrecoverable” nose dive.

However, both the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and France’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety identified pilot error as a critical contributing factor. U.S. and French investigators also disputed the Ethiopian finding that the sensor gave a bad reading due to production quality defects and instead said evidence suggested a bird strike on the sensor vane.

Following the two accidents, the Boeing 737 Max fleet was grounded worldwide from March 2019 to December 2020.

The Settlement

Boeing reached a $2.5 billion settlement with the DOJ in January 2021 to avoid prosecution on a fraud charge for misleading federal regulators who approved the 737 Max.

The DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs said Boeing admitted that through two of its 737 Max flight technical pilots, the company deceived the Federal Aviation Administration’s Aircraft Evaluation Group about the way the MCAS operated.

A Boeing 737 Max 8 airplane lands following a test flight at Boeing Field in Seattle on April 10, 2019. Ted S. Warren/AP Photo

Because of this, 737 Max airplane manuals and pilot training materials used by U.S.-based airlines lacked key information about the MCAS.

The DOJ said in court filings in May that Boeing violated the terms of the 2021 settlement by failing to make promised changes to detect and prevent violations of federal anti-fraud laws. The department said it was weighing whether to file charges against the company and would notify the court by July 7.

Boeing said in a statement in May that it believed it had honored the terms of the agreement and vowed to engage with the DOJ on the matter “with the utmost transparency.”

Mr. Cassell’s letter was published a day after a hearing before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, at which Boeing CEO David Calhoun apologized to the families of those who lost loved ones in the crashes.