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Boeing will not have to deal with one of the biggest potential consequences of its 737 Max 9 door plug blowout in January. The New York Times reports that the Department of Justice will not pursue charges for a potential violation of a plea agreement, which Boeing had struck in 2021 after two fatal crashes of the 737 Max 8 model. Instead, the Times says, the government will offer Boeing another so-called “deferred prosecution agreement” (DPA). The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2018, a Lion Air-opeated 737 Max 8 crashed into the Java Sea 13 minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 people on board. In 2019, an Ethiopian Airlines-operated Max 8 crashed six minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 people on board. Before his testimony Tuesday, Calhoun apologized to the families of the victims on his company’s behalf.
When outgoing Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun testified before the Senate on Tuesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said he thought there was “overwhelming evidence” that the plea agreement had been violated and that he thought “prosecution should be pursued” because the door plug blowout suggested Boeing had not been making the internal reforms it had promised were coming.
Mark Lindquist, a lawyer representing some of the the families of the Max 8 crash victims (and some of the passengers aboard the Alaska Airlines flight that suffered the door plug blowout earlier this year), told the Times that the new deal was likely because the government did not think it could win a guilty verdict against Boeing.
Erin Applebaum, a partner at the law firm representing some of the Lion Air families, expressed severe disappointment in the outcome.
“While we support the imposition of a federal monitor, it should be imposed in response to criminal charges, not as part of yet another soft-handed backroom deal with the U.S. government,” she said in a statement provided to Quartz. “The Department of Justice’s unwillingness to enforce the law is barely a surprise at this point, and the 737 Max families have lost all faith that the Department will ever truly hold Boeing to account for its crimes.
“It simply defies belief that the 737 Max families would once again find out about a Boeing DPA through the media rather than directly from the Department — yet another shameful example of the DOJ putting Boeing’s interests ahead of the victims’ rights.”