Angry relatives of hundreds killed in twin fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes blast Justice Department after offering ‘sweetheart plea deal’ to planemaker

Angry relatives of hundreds of people who died in the twin fatal crashes of the Boeing 737 Max have lashed out at the Justice Department after it offered the aerospace giant a “sweetheart plea deal.”

Boeing will have until the end of next week to accept or reject the offer, which requires the planemaker to agree to hire an independent monitor to oversee its compliance with anti-fraud laws, the Justice Department said.

The department notified relatives of some of the 346 people who died in the 2018 and 2019 crashes about the plea offer during a video meeting.

One said prosecutors were manipulating the families; another yelled at them for several minutes when given the chance to speak.

“We’re angry. They should just sue,” said Nadia Milleron, a Massachusetts resident whose 24-year-old daughter, Samya Stumo, died in the second of two 737 Max crashes. “This is just another way of letting Boeing off the hook.”

Prosecutors told the families – who want Boeing to face criminal charges and pay a $24.8 billion fine – that if Boeing rejects the plea offer, the Justice Department would seek a trial in the case, meeting participants said.

Justice Department officials presented the offer to Boeing at a meeting later Sunday, according to a person familiar with the situation.

The meeting with families of the crash victims came weeks after prosecutors told O’Connor that the U.S. aerospace giant had violated a January 2021 settlement that had shielded Boeing from criminal prosecution in connection with the crashes.

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The second event took place in Ethiopia, less than five months after the one in Indonesia.

Some legal experts say a conviction could jeopardize Boeing’s status as a federal contractor. The company has major contracts with the Pentagon and NASA.

However, federal agencies can grant waivers to companies convicted of crimes to keep them eligible for government contracts, and attorneys for the crash victims’ families expect that to be done for Boeing.

But outrage was sparked when it was revealed that the US government was preparing to offer Boeing a “sweetheart deal” following the two fatal 737 Max crashes.

The deal will include a small fine and three years of safety audits, the lawyer representing the crash victims said.

The plea deal would strip U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the ability to increase Boeing’s sentence if convicted, and some families plan to ask the Texas judge to reject the deal if Boeing accepts it.

“The underlying scandal of this settlement is that it fails to acknowledge that Boeing’s crime killed 346 people,” said Paul Cassell, one of the attorneys for the victims’ families.

“Boeing will not be held responsible for this and will not acknowledge that this happened.”

Sanjiv Singh, a lawyer representing 16 families who lost loved ones in the Lion Air crash off Indonesia in October 2018, called the plea offer “extremely disappointing.”

The terms, he said, “appear to me to be a sweetheart deal.”

Another attorney representing the families suing Boeing, Mark Lindquist, said he asked Justice Department fraud chief Glenn Leon whether the department would add additional charges if Boeing refused the plea deal.

“He wouldn’t commit one way or the other,” Lindquist said.

Boeing paid a $244 million fine as part of a 2021 settlement of the original fraud charge.

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The Justice Department is likely to seek another similar sentence as part of the new plea offer, said a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing case.

The deal would include a monitor to oversee Boeing — but the company would put forward three candidates and let the Justice Department choose one, or ask Boeing for additional names.

This provision was particularly disliked by family members present at the call, participants said.

The Justice Department also gave no indication whether it will prosecute current or former Boeing executives, another request long awaited by the families.

Lindquist, a former prosecutor, said officials made clear at a previous meeting that individuals — even CEOs — can be more sympathetic defendants than companies.

Officials cited as an example the 2022 acquittal on fraud charges against Boeing’s chief technical pilot for the Max.

It’s unclear what impact a plea deal could have on other Boeing investigations, including those that followed the shattering of a panel called a door stopper on the side of a Boeing Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

The company has also come under fire following a series of disasters this year alone.

On March 3, a United Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 left the runway after landing in Houston due to some form of landing gear collapse.

Shocking footage shows the plane lying flat on its wings on the grass at the edge of the runway as passengers were evacuated down an emergency ladder.

Then, five days later, on March 7, a wheel came off a Boeing 777-200 shortly after takeoff from San Francisco, crushing cars below.

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On March 11, a Boeing 777 was forced to land due to hydraulic fluid leaking from its landing gear, and on March 15, a United Airlines 737 was grounded after it was discovered to be missing a panel after successfully landing at Medford Airport in Oregon despite the missing part.

The plane with 235 passengers and 14 crew members was diverted to Los Angeles airport after being alerted of a landing gear failure and landed safely without further incident and with no injuries reported on the ground.

On March 20, a Boeing 737-900 bound for Atlanta was forced to turn around and make an emergency landing after an engine failure on takeoff from Aruba, and on March 29, a Boeing 777-200 flying from San Francisco to Paris had to land early in Denver after engine problems.

On April 26, Delta Flight 520 was forced to make an emergency landing at JFK Airport when an emergency slide fell off the 33-year-old Boeing 767 an hour into its journey to Los Angeles, and on May 8, a FedEx Airlines Boeing cargo plane landed at Istanbul Airport without its nose landing gear deployed.

A day later, the front tire of a Corendon Airlines Boeing 737 burst while landing at an airport in southern Turkey.

On May 21, one person died on board a Boeing 777 and others were injured when the London-Singapore flight plummeted 6,000 feet in five minutes before making an emergency landing in Thailand.

The fatal crashes of the Boeing 737 Max 8 occurred between October 2018 and March 2019.

In 2018, Lion Air Flight JT610 crashed into the sea off Jakarta shortly after departing a domestic flight, killing all 189 passengers on board.

Investigators said automated systems likely mistakenly believed the plane had stalled and needed to descend to increase speed.

The 737 Max 8 jet had only been launched globally the previous year.

Just five months later, in March 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 301 crashed minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa en route to Nairobi, killing all 157 people on board.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) then ordered U.S. airlines to ground all 737 Max planes, following in the footsteps of regulators in China, Europe and Canada.

Boeing accepted the FAA’s decision at the time.

“Boeing has decided, as a precautionary measure and to reassure travelers about the safety of the aircraft, to recommend to the FAA the temporary suspension of operations of the entire global fleet of 371 737 Max airplanes,” the company said.