Boeing to pay $2.5 bln to settle 737 Max charges

Boeing has agreed to pay more than $2.5 billion to settle charges of criminal conspiracy related to a series of fatal incidents involving its 737 Max aircraft.

CNBC’s Leslie Josephs reported:

Boeing agreed to pay more than $2.5 billion to settle a criminal probe with the U.S. Justice Department, which accused the company of concealing information about its 737 Max airplane that was involved in two crashes that claimed 346 lives, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.

The deferred prosecution agreement closes the DOJ’s roughly two-year probe and drops all charges after three years if there aren’t additional violations.

The BBC reported:

“The tragic crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 exposed fraudulent and deceptive conduct by employees of one of the world’s leading commercial airplane manufacturers,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General David Burns.

“Boeing’s employees chose the path of profit over candour by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 Max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception.”

Sean O’Kane from The Verge wrote:

Boeing’s 737 Max was supposed to be a plane that helped the company keep pace with a new, more fuel-efficient offering from rival Airbus. But the company rushed the design, and as a result, the plane was susceptible to dangerous stalls in certain takeoff situations. Boeing created a piece of software to counteract this design flaw by automatically pushing the plane’s nose down. But the company never told the FAA, airlines, or pilots about the software in order to save time and money.

What’s worse, this software worked off of readings from a lone sensor on the plane’s exterior — meaning there was no way to know if it was acting with bad information if the sensor was damaged.