Boeing should not face criminal conspiracy charge over crashes – US judge

The case centred around the Boeing 737 Max jet (Elaine Thompson/AP)

Boeing will not face a criminal conspiracy charge over two 737 Max jetliner crashes that killed 346 people after a federal judge in Texas granted the government’s request to dismiss the case.

As part of a deal to drop the charge, the American aerospace company has agreed to pay or invest an additional 1.1 billion dollars (£0.84bn) in fines, compensation for the crash victims’ families, and internal safety and quality measures.

Prosecutors alleged Boeing deceived government regulators about a flight-control system that was later implicated in the fatal flights.

The ruling comes after an emotional hearing in September when relatives of some of the victims urged US District Judge Reed O’Connor to reject the deal and instead appoint a special prosecutor to take over the case.

Do not allow Boeing to buy its freedom

However, in a written decision issued on Thursday in Fort Worth, the judge agreed to dismiss the charge.

The long-running case has taken many twists and turns since the Justice Department first charged Boeing in January 2021 with defrauding the US government, including a failed deal that would have required the company to plead guilty. That plea agreement fell through after Judge O’Connor did not approve it.

In a statement issued after the ruling, Boeing said they were committed to honouring their agreement with the Justice Department, as well as “continuing the significant efforts we have made as a company to strengthen our safety, quality, and compliance programmes”.

Airlines began flying the Max in 2017. All passengers and crew members died when two of the planes went down less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019, one off the coast of Indonesia and another in Ethiopia.

The Justice Department said it believed the latest agreement served the public interest more effectively than taking the case to trial and risking a jury verdict that might spare the company further punishment.

It also said the families of 110 crash victims either support resolving the case before it reaches trial or did not oppose the deal.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen relatives spoke at the September 3 hearing, some of whom travelled to Texas from as far as Europe and Africa. They are among nearly 100 families who opposed the agreement.

Catherine Berthet, who travelled from France, asked the judge to send the case to trial.

“Do not allow Boeing to buy its freedom,” she said. Her daughter, Camille Geoffroy, died when a 737 Max crashed shortly after take-off from Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa Bole International Airport.

The years-long case centres around a software system that Boeing developed for the 737 Max.

In both of the deadly crashes, that software pitched the nose of the plane down repeatedly based on faulty readings from a single sensor, and pilots flying for Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines were unable to regain control. After the Ethiopia crash, the planes were grounded worldwide for 20 months.

Investigators found that Boeing did not inform key Federal Aviation Administration personnel about changes it had made to the software before regulators set pilot training requirements for the Max and certified the airliner for flight.