The Justice Department submitted an agreement with Boeing last week in which the aerospace giant will plead guilty to a fraud charge for misleading U.S. regulators who approved the 737 Max jetliner before two of the planes crashed, killing 346 people.
The detailed plea agreement was filed in a federal district court in Texas. The American company and the Justice Department reached a deal on the guilty plea and the agreement’s broad terms in early July.
The final version states Boeing admitted that through its employees, it agreed “by dishonest means” to defraud a Federal Aviation Administration group that evaluated the 737 Max. The plea agreement says that because of Boeing’s deception, the FAA had “incomplete and inaccurate information” about the plane’s flight-control software and how much training pilots would need.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor can accept the agreement and sentence worked out between Boeing and prosecutors, or he could reject it, likely leading to new negotiations between the company and the Justice Department.
The deal calls for the appointment of an independent compliance monitor, three years of probation and a fine of at least $243.6 million. It also requires Boeing to invest at least $455 million “in its compliance, quality, and safety programs.”
Boeing issued a statement saying the company “will continue to work transparently with our regulators as we take significant actions across Boeing to strengthen further” those programs.
Paul Cassell, a lawyer for families of victims of the 737 Max crashes who wanted Boeing to face trial, criticized the agreement.
“The plea has all the problems that the families feared it would have. We will file a strong objection to the preferential and sweetheart treatment Boeing is receiving,” he said.
Boeing was accused of misleading the FAA about aspects of the Max before the agency certified the plane for flight. Boeing did not tell airlines and pilots about the new software system, called MCAS, that could turn the plane’s nose down without input from pilots if a sensor detected that the plane might go into an aerodynamic stall.
Max planes crashed in 2018 in Indonesia and in 2019 in Ethiopia after a faulty reading from the sensor pushed the nose down, and pilots were unable to regain control. After the second crash, Max jets were grounded worldwide until the company redesigned MCAS to be less powerful and to use signals from two sensors instead of one.
Boeing avoided prosecution in 2021 by reaching a $2.5 billion settlement with the Justice Department that included a previous $243.6 million fine. It appeared that the fraud charge would be permanently dismissed until January when a panel covering an unused exit blew off a 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight. That led to new scrutiny of the company’s safety.
This May, prosecutors said Boeing violated the terms of the 2021 agreement by failing to make promised changes to detect and prevent violations of federal anti-fraud laws. Boeing agreed this month to plead guilty to the felony fraud charge instead of enduring a potentially lengthy public trial.
According to experts in corporate governance and white-collar crime, the role and authority of the monitor are viewed as a key provision of the new plea deal. Cassell has said that families of the crash victims should have the right to propose a monitor for the judge to appoint. The agreement calls for the government to select the monitor “with feedback from Boeing.”
In Wednesday’s filing, the Justice Department said that Boeing “took considerable steps” to improve its anti-fraud compliance program since 2021. Still, the changes “have not been fully implemented or tested to demonstrate that they would prevent and detect similar misconduct in the future.”
The plea deal states that the independent monitor will come in “to reduce the risk of misconduct.”
Based in Arlington, Virginia, Boeing is a major Pentagon and NASA contractor; a guilty plea is not expected to change that. Government agencies have leeway to hire companies even after a criminal conviction, and the plea agreement does not address this topic.
Some passengers’ relatives plan to ask the judge to reject the plea deal. They want a full trial and a harsher penalty for Boeing, and many of them want current and former Boeing executives charged.
If the judge approves the deal, it would apply to the criminal charge stemming from the 737 Max crashes. It would not resolve other matters, potentially including the Alaska Airlines blowout litigation.
