Boeing will plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge from two deadly crashes of its 737 Max 8 planes that killed 346 passengers and crew, and will cough up a $243.6 million fine, the Department of Justice said on Sunday night.
The plea deal came after federal prosecutors gave Boeing the choice to enter a plea deal and pay a fine or face trial on the federal criminal charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States. The settlement now must be approved by a judge, but the deal will save Boeing from a criminal trial despite advocacy from the families of those killed in the crashes.
The $243.6 million fine is on top of the same amount paid in 2021 under a settlement the DOJ said the company breached. Additionally, Boeing vowed to invest at least $455 million over the next three years to tighten its safety and compliance programs, according to the DOJ.
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An independent monitor will oversee Boeing’s safety efforts and quality procedures over the next three years. The plea is meant to cover only wrongdoing by the company before the crashes and does not include immunity for other incidents Boeing has been responsible for, including a panel that blew off a 737 Max 9 plane during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, according to the DOJ.
The deal also does not cover any current or former Boeing officials and is aimed solely at the corporation. Boeing confirmed in a statement it agreed to the plea deal with the DOJ and declined to comment further.
The case is in response to two deadly crashes. The first came in 2018 in Indonesia, where Lion Air pilots did not know about the flight-control software that could push the nose of the Boeing 737 Max 8 down without their input. The Lion Air crash killed 189 people. The second was in 2019 in Ethiopia, where an Ethiopian Airlines pilot knew about the software but was not able to control the plane when the software activated due to information about a faulty sensor. One hundred fifty-seven people were killed.
The DOJ charged Boeing in 2021 with deceiving FAA regulators about the software, which did not exist in the older 737s, and about a lack of adequate training for pilots to fly the new planes safely. At the time, the department agreed not to prosecute Boeing if it paid a massive $2.5 billion settlement on top of the $243.6 million fine and complied with anti-fraud laws for the next three years. After a 20-month ban on 737 Max flights, things went smoothly until the Alaska Airlines incident.
