Justice Department strikes tentative deal allowing Boeing to escape criminal charges in fatal 737 Max crashes

The Justice Department on Friday said it had struck a tentative deal with Boeing to allow the company to avoid criminal prosecution for allegedly misleading regulators about the company's 737 Max plane before two crashes that killed 346 people.

The deal still needs to be finalized, but Boeing would pay out $1.1 billion, including $445 million to a fund for the crash victims’ families, the Justice Department said in court documents. 

In exchange, federal prosecutors will dismiss a fraud charge against the aircraft manufacturer.

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"Boeing must continue to improve the effectiveness of its anti-fraud compliance and ethics program and retain an independent compliance consultant," the department said Friday. "We are confident that this resolution is the most just outcome with practical benefits."

Last year, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge after two fatal 737 Max crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018 and 2019. The company previously agreed to pay a fine of up to $487.2 million and face three years of independent oversight.

The deal announced Friday did not go over well with relatives of those killed in the crashes. 

"This kind of non-prosecution deal is unprecedented and obviously wrong for the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history. My families will object and hope to convince the court to reject it," said the families’ pro bono lawyer, Paul Cassell, professor of the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. 

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"With this filing, the DOJ walks away from any pretense to seek justice for the victims of the 737 Max crashes," said Javier de Luis, an aerospace engineer from Massachusetts whose sister was killed in the second crash. "In spite of the mountains of reports and investigations over the last six years documenting wrongdoing by Boeing, DOJ is claiming that they cannot prove that anybody did anything wrong. The message sent by this action to companies around the country is, ‘Don’t worry about making your products safe for your customers.’

"'Even if you kill them, just pay a small fine and move on,'" he added. "Boeing has repeatedly shown itself incapable of changing their ways on their own. The Alaska Air door blowout five years after the fatal Max crashes proves this. This agreement does not provide for a robust, externally supervised safety monitoring program."

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Boeing has faced increased scrutiny from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) since January 2024, when a new Max 9 missing four key bolts had a mid-air emergency, losing a door plug, Reuters reported. The FAA has capped production at 38 planes per month.

Last year, the DOJ found Boeing had violated a 2021 agreement that shielded the plane-maker from prosecution.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Justice Department.