Boeing finalises guilty plea deal over fatal 737 MAX crashes

As a part of its deal with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to resolve a probe into fatal 737 MAX crashes, Boeing is set to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge, said a court filing Wednesday (Jul 24).

The agreement was reached after the prosecutors determined that Boeing had flouted the terms of a settlement made previously surrounding the earlier accidents that had in total claimed the lives of 346 people in Ethiopia as well as Indonesia more than five years ago.

The plea deal, which calls for Boeing to pay an additional amount of $243.6 million along with a previous fine of the same money, must be approved by a federal court judge.

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"We will continue to work transparently with our regulators as we take significant actions across Boeing to further strengthen our safety, quality and compliance programs," a spokesperson for the aircraft manufacturer told news agency AFP while confirming the court filing.

The high-profile deal comes after the DOJ, in the month of May, found out that Boeing violated a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) as it failed to strengthen its compliance and ethics program after the deadly MAX crashes.

Boeing breached the DPA "by failing to sufficiently design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of US fraud laws throughout its operations," the prosecutor said in court documents.

According to the filing, Boeing connived to trick US air traffic safety regulators regarding the Max 737 while it was being certified.

The company, in April 2019, admitted that anti-stall flight software was partly responsible for the crashes.

As per the plea deal, Boeing will have to serve three years of "organizational probation".

The terms of the agreement include having an independent monitor along with investing at least $455 million in compliance, quality and safety programs, according to the filing.

'Unfair deal'

The families of the victims of the fatal crashes, however, have raised objections to the deal stating that it "unfairly makes concessions to Boeing that other criminal defendants would never receive."

The plea deal also requires the company's board of directors to meet the families of victims who lost their lives in the fatal 2018 and 2019 crashes.

"The generous plea agreement rests on deceptive and offensive premises," said an objection filed by their legal team when word of the plea deal first surfaced.

(With inputs from agencies)