The Justice Department plans to file criminal charges against Boeing for breaching an agreement that shielded the manufacturer from prosecution after two fatal plane crashes in 2018 and 2019. DOJ will give Boeing a week either to plead guilty or risk a trial, Politico reports. An attorney for family members of some of those lost in the crash in Ethiopia suggested DOJ’s decision was born of cowardice. Robert Clifford of the Clifford Law Firm accused the DOJ of giving Boeing a “sweetheart deal” and said the agency is “afraid to prosecute a company that they believe is too big to fail.” DOJ’s decision comes after weeks of deliberations, kicked off by a spate of new quality control problems at one of the most important manufacturers. It adds a grave element to accusations that Boeing, also a major defense and aerospace contractor for the federal government, has put short-term profits ahead of public safety.
The DOJ action places a major weight on Boeing’s neck as it navigates mounting federal probes and congressional scrutiny after a high-profile incident this year in which a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines flight. Faulty flight control software on another version of the MAX had been blamed for the 2018 and 2019 crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. In the agreement Boeing is accused of violating, charges were to be dismissed after three years if the company met several conditions, including creating a program that would flag any hint of fraud by Boeing employees, agents acting on the company’s behalf before regulators foreign or domestic, or by any of Boeing’s airline customers. DOJ said Boeing is “subject to prosecution” because it failed to “design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the U.S. fraud laws throughout its operations.” Nadia Milleron, whose daughter died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash, said families will ask Texas federal judge Judge Reed O’Connor not to sign the agreement.