Boeing has agreed to pay $942 million in penalties in a proposed plea agreement over a conspiracy charge stemming from two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019.
In 2021, the Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Boeing with defrauding the Federal Aviation Administration Aircraft Evaluation Group regarding the deadly Boeing 737 Max 8 plane crashes. In a deferred prosecution agreement at the time, the company agreed to pay a $243.6 million fine and comply with new safety obligations.
After a door plug blew out on a 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, the DOJ found that Boeing had violated the deferred prosecution agreement.
U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor will decide whether to accept the plea agreement.
Boeing issued a statement saying the company will “continue to work transparently” with regulators as it takes “significant actions” to further strengthen the compliance, quality, and safety programs.
Paul Cassell, a lawyer for families of victims of the 737 Max crashes who want Boeing to face trial, criticized the agreement.
“The plea has all the problems in it that the families feared it would have. We will file a strong objection to the preferential and sweetheart treatment Boeing is receiving,” he said.
More Plea Details
According to the pending agreement, Boeing failed to “sufficiently design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of U.S. fraud laws throughout its operations.”As the company already paid $243.6 million in the earlier prosecution agreement, Boeing would be obligated to pay the other half of the total fine under the new agreement.
In addition to the $487.2 million fine, the agreement mandates that Boeing serve a three-year probation, during which the company must invest at least $455 million in its compliance, quality, and safety programs.
The 2021 charge against Boeing was related to the firm’s implementation of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) flight mechanism. The system was implemented in the planes involved in the 2018 and 2019 crashes, in which 346 people were killed.
The DOJ found that Boeing failed to adequately notify the Federal Aviation Administration, the airlines, and airline pilots when it added the MCAS to the 787 model planes.
In both crashes, the MCAS was found to have been activated because of a faulty sensor on the plane that mistakenly determined that the nose of the aircraft was at an unsafe angle.
