Furious relatives of hundreds who died in two deadly Boeing 737 Max jetliner crashes blast Justice Department after they offered 'sweetheart plea deal' to plane-maker

Furious relatives of the hundreds who died in two deadly Boeing 737 Max jetliner crashes have blasted the Justice Department after they offered a 'sweetheart plea deal' to the plane-making giant.

Boeing will have until the end of the coming week to accept or reject the offer, which includes the plane maker agreeing to an independent monitor who would oversee its compliance with anti-fraud laws, the Justice Department said.

The department told relatives of some of the 346 people who died in the 2018 and 2019 crashes about the plea offer during a video meeting. 

One said prosecutors were gaslighting the families; another shouted at them for several minutes when given a chance to speak.

'We are upset. They should just prosecute,' said Massachusetts resident Nadia Milleron, whose 24-year-old daughter, Samya Stumo, died in the second of two 737 Max crashes, 'this is just a reworking of letting Boeing off the hook.'  

Prosecutors told the families - who want Boeing to face a criminal trial and to pay a $24.8billion fine - that if Boeing rejects the plea offer, the Justice Department would seek a trial in the matter, meeting participants said.

Justice Department officials presented the offer to Boeing during a meeting later Sunday, according to a person familiar with the situation.   

The meeting with crash victims' families came weeks after prosecutors told O'Connor that the American aerospace giant breached the January 2021 deal that had protected Boeing from criminal prosecution in connection with the crashes. 

The second one took place in Ethiopia less than five months after the one in Indonesia.

A conviction could jeopardize Boeing's status as a federal contractor, according to some legal experts. The company has large contracts with the Pentagon and NASA.

However, federal agencies can give waivers to companies that are convicted of felonies to keep them eligible for government contracts, and lawyers for the crash victims' families expect that would be done for Boeing.

But outrage was sparked as it was revealed the US government is preparing to offer Boeing a 'sweetheart plea deal' over the two deadly 737 Max jetliner crashes.

The said deal will include a small fine and three years of safety audits, the lawyer representing the crash victims has revealed.

The plea deal would take away the ability of US District Judge Reed O'Connor to increase Boeing's sentence for a conviction, and some of the families plan to ask the Texas judge to reject the deal if Boeing agrees to it.

'The underlying outrageous piece of this deal is that it doesn't acknowledge that Boeing's crime killed 346 people,' said Paul Cassell, one of the lawyers for victims' families. 

'Boeing is not going to be held accountable for that, and they are not going to admit that that happened.' 

Sanjiv Singh, a lawyer for 16 families who lost relatives in the October 2018 Lion Air crash off Indonesia, called the plea offer 'extremely disappointing.'   

The terms, he said, 'read to me like a sweetheart deal.'   

Another lawyer representing families who are suing Boeing, Mark Lindquist, said he asked the head of the Justice Department's fraud section, Glenn Leon, whether the department would add additional charges if Boeing turns down the plea deal. 

'He wouldn't commit one way or another,' Lindquist said.

Boeing paid a $244million fine as part of the 2021 settlement of the original fraud charge. 

The Justice Department is likely to seek another, similar penalty as part of the new plea offer, said a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing to discuss an ongoing case.

The deal would include a monitor to oversee Boeing - but the company would put forward three nominees and have the Justice Department pick one, or ask Boeing for additional names. 

That provision was particularly hated by the family members on the call, participants said.

The Justice Department also gave no indication of moving to prosecute any current or former Boeing executives, another long-sought demand of the families.

Lindquist, a former prosecutor, said officials made clear during an earlier meeting that individuals - even CEOs - can be more sympathetic defendants than corporations. 

The officials pointed to the 2022 acquittal on fraud charges of Boeing's chief technical pilot for the Max as an example.

It is unclear what impact a plea deal might have on other investigations into Boeing, including those following the blowout of a panel called a door plug from the side of a Boeing Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in January. 

The company is also under fire following a series of disasters - from just this year alone.

On March 3, a United Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 veered off the runway after landing in Houston due to some sort of gear collapse.

Shocking footage showed the plane lying flat on its wings on grass by the side of the runway, while passengers were hurried off from an emergency gate ladder.

Then just five days later, on March 7, a wheel fell off a Boeing 777-200 shortly after takeoff from San Francisco, crushing cars below.

On March 11,  a Boeing 777 was was forced to land due to hydraulic fluid spewing from its landing gear area and on March 15 a United Airlines 737 was grounded after it was found to be missing a panel after it touched down successfully in Medford Airport, Oregon, despite the missing part.

The plane with 235 passengers and 14 crew diverted to Los Angeles Airport after it was alerted to the landing gear failure and landed safely with no further incident and no injuries reported on the ground.

On March 20 a Boeing 737 900 bound for Atlanta was forced to turn back and make an emergency landing after an engine blow out on take-off from Aruba and on March 29 a Boeing 777-200 flying from San Francisco to Paris had to touch down early in Denver after engine problems.

On April 26, Delta flight 520 was forced to make an emergency landing at JFK Airport when an emergency slide fell off the 33-year-old Boeing 767 an hour into its journey to Los Angeles and on May 8 a FedEx Airlines Boeing cargo plane landed at Istanbul Airport without the front landing gear deployed.

Just a day later a Corendon Airlines Boeing 737 plane's front tire burst upon landing at an airport in southern Turkey.

Then on May 21 one person died aboard a Boeing 777 and others were injured on the flight from London to Singapore which plummeted 6,000ft in five minutes before making an emergency landing in Thailand.

The deadly Boeing 737 Max 8 crashes took place between October 2018 and March 2019.

In 2018, Lion Air flight JT610 crashed into the sea off Jakarta shortly after departing on a domestic flight, killing all 189 passengers on board. 

Investigators said automated systems probably believed erroneously that the aircraft had stalled and needed to descend to increase airspeed.

The 737 Max 8 jet had only been launched globally the previous year.

Just five months later, in March 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 301 crashed just minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa en route to Nairobi, killing all 157 people on board.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) then ordered US airlines to ground all 737 Max aircraft, following in the footsteps of regulators from China, Europe, and Canada.

Boeing agreed with the FAA's decision at the time. 

'Boeing has determined — out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public of the aircraft's safety — to recommend to the FAA the temporary suspension of the operations of the entire global fleet of 371 737 Max aircraft,' the company said.