Boeing will plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge stemming from two deadly crashes of 737 Max jetliners after the government determined the company violated an agreement that had protected it from prosecution for more than three years, the Justice Department said Sunday night.
Federal prosecutors gave Boeing the choice this week of entering a guilty plea and paying a fine as part of its sentence or facing a trial on the felony criminal charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Prosecutors accused the American aerospace giant of deceiving regulators who approved the airplane and pilot-training requirements for it.
The plea deal, which still must receive the approval of a federal judge to take effect, calls for Boeing to pay an additional $243.6 million fine. That was the same amount it paid under the 2021 settlement that the Justice Department said the company breached. An independent monitor would be named to oversee Boeing’s safety and quality procedures for three years.
The plea deal covers only wrongdoing by Boeing before the crashes, which killed all 346 passengers and crew members aboard two new Max jets. It does not give Boeing immunity for other incidents, including a panel that blew off a Max jetliner during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, a Justice Department official said.
Damn, I wish I could commit felony fraud and get off with just a fine.
Although, doesn’t the government usually prefer to not work with convicted felons? Does this mean they’ll prefer other companies for contracts, etc.?
We’d need to actually have an aviation market instead of (checks notes) two corporations.
One. Airbus is foreign competition, just like the Chinese company that now is entering the market.
The US govt will not buy Airbus over Boeing, and will not let airlines overwhelmingly switch to it either.
We don’t need Boeing for for passenger jets. We need them for, well let’s just roll out the list.
And I’m getting tired of copying things from their Wikipedia. It goes on into drones and missiles too. So this isn’t about the foreign competition, it’s about keeping a part of our defense industry marginally competitive with Boeing and Lockheed both kicking around.
So there is the market capitalist solution of breaking them up and letting the pieces compete with each other, or the socialist solution of nationalizing them.
If this goes on, how do you know any of those airframes aren’t as much of a sham as the 787?
This is how you end up with an army like Russia.
Oh dude, military procurement is unreal. I’m surprised our stuff actually functions.
The thing is, a lot of it might not. See Russia for an example.
No it does. We just had a 20 year stress test on a bunch of it.
And pay a fine of 1 day’s salary.