Boeing to be offered plea deal by Justice Department over deadly 737 Max crashes

Embattled aircraft manufacturer Boeing is close to reaching a deal with the Department of Justice to plead guilty to criminal charges over two deadly 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019.

The aerospace giant is accused of violating a 2021 settlement related to the two fatal crashes, which took place within five months of each other and killed a total of 346 people – first in Indonesia in October 2018 and then in Ethiopia in 2019.

The DOJ first brought charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States against Boeing in January 2021, alleging it misled the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) during its evaluation of the 737 MAX aircraft.

At the time, the company entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ, agreeing to pay fines of $243.7m, $1.77bn compensation to airline customers and $500m to the crash victims’ beneficiaries.

Boeing was also forced to disclose any allegations of fraud, cooperate with the government and avoid committing any felony offense. Under these conditions, the DOJ agreed to defer criminal prosecution for three years.

However, this May the DOJ said that Boeing – which is in turmoil over a string of safety scandals – had failed to live up to its obligations under the agreement.

Now, the DOJ is proposing a new deal that would see the company plead guilty to conspiracy charges but avoid criminal trial, attorneys for the families of the crash victims told ABC News.

The company must also agree to the appointment of an external corporate monitor, pay a fine of about $200m and remain on probation for three years, the lawyers told ABC News. Under the deal, the company would also avoid going to trial.

“The company would be absolutely brutalized in a highly public trial,” Mark Lindquist, another attorney for crash victims’ families, told ABC News. “Boeing has way too much dirty laundry to risk the bright spotlight of a trial.”

Lindquist said Boeing has until July 7 to accept the deal. If Boeing rejects the terms, the DOJ can pursue criminal prosecution.

It is unclear if Boeing plans to accept the deal. The company previously disputed the DOJ’s findings that it had violated the 2021 agreement, saying that it had “honored the terms” of the 2021…