As several families grapple with the loss of loved ones due to air travel incidents, new information has emerged that might help them find closure.
Prosecutors have found Boeing in breach of the agreement that allowed it to avoid criminal prosecution in connection with crashes in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019 that killed 346 people — opening the company up to the possibility of criminal fraud conviction.
“Nobody was more shocked or happier to be shocked than me,” Javier Luis, brother of an Ethiopia crash victim, said to the Washington Post.
Prosecutors have not said whether the criminal investigation into the Alaska Airlines blowout or subsequent appeals from family members played a role in their conclusion that Boeing had not met the conditions of its 2021 “deferred prosecution” deal.
“When Boeing was granted a deferred prosecution agreement, I said that it would incentivize bad behavior and do nothing to change the rotten corporate culture that allowed Boeing to mislead and deceive regulators, because it held no one accountable,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said in a statement. “The only way to ensure companies put safety above profit is through transparency and accountability.”
In the settlement, Boeing paid more than $2.5 billion in penalties and admitted that two of its technical pilots deceived federal safety regulators about a software system blamed for the accidents. The agreement ended on Jan. 7, two days after an Alaska Airlines flight saw a door blow off, igniting controversy towards Boeing once again, and beginning a six-month review.
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In a two-page letter sent to U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor on May 14, Justice Department officials wrote that Boeing didn’t meet the terms of the agreement because it did not “design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the U.S. fraud laws throughout its operations.”
Per terms of the settlement, the DOJ has until July 7 to make a decision on what the breach will mean for Boeing.
