Boeing says it’s not guilty of fraud in Max crashes

FORT WORTH, Texas — Boeing pleaded not guilty Thursday to a fraud charge in an unusual case in which families of passengers who died in two plane crashes are trying to throw out a settlement the company reached to avoid prosecution.

At a hearing dominated by emotional, wrenching testimony from passengers’ relatives, a federal district judge took the plea and ordered Boeing not to break any laws for the next year.

The judge delayed ruling on a request by the families to appoint a special monitor to examine safety issues at the aerospace giant. Boeing and the Justice Department opposed the request.

More than a dozen relatives of passengers on a Boeing 737 Max that crashed in 2019 in Ethiopia — less than five months after a Max crashed in Indonesia — held nothing back as they testified about their loss. The crashes killed a combined total of 346 people.

Boeing’s chief aerospace safety officer and lawyers for the company and the Justice Department sat just feet away but showed no reaction to any of the stories.

The Justice Department investigated Boeing after the second Max crash and settled the case in January 2021. With the settlement, the government agreed not to prosecute Boeing on a charge of defrauding the United States by deceiving regulators who approved the plane. In exchange, the company paid $2.5 billion, including a $243.6 million fine.

The families are still stunned. “We want to see real justice, and that has to be prosecutions for manslaughter,” said Naoise Connolly Ryan, whose husband was on the second Max that crashed.

The fate of the settlement could rest with Judge Reed O’Connor.

He carved a path for the families to challenge the settlement by ruling last November that the Justice Department had violated federal law by not consulting with crime victims before what amounted to a plea deal.