In a meeting described as tense and emotional, families who lost loved ones in the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max jets sought to convince Justice Department officials Friday that the company has not learned from its mistakes and should face a criminal trial for fraud in connection with the deaths of 346 people.
“The Justice Department has a chance to fix this — to prosecute Boeing, to go for a heavy sentence, terms of probation that force Boeing to clean house because it will be too expensive for them to do otherwise,” said Michael Stumo, who lost daughter Samya, 24, in the 2019 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302.
Stumo was among 40 family members who took part in an all-day, closed-door meeting in Washington — likely their final chance to weigh in as the Justice Department contemplates its next steps in a case that garnered new attention following the midair blowout of a door plug from a Boeing 737 Max jet operated by Alaska Airlines this year.
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The Justice Department declined to comment on the meeting.
In 2021, prosecutors reached an agreement with Boeing that would allow the aerospace giant to avoid criminal prosecution for fraud. The company agreed to pay $2.5 billion in penalties, $500 million of which was set aside for families, and acknowledged that two of the company’s technical pilots misled federal safety regulators about a software system blamed for the crashes — the first, of a Lion Air jet in October 2018 in Indonesia, followed by the second five months later in Ethiopia.
The “deferred prosecution agreement” expired two days after the Alaska Airlines accident and just as the Justice Department began a review to determine whether Boeing met the conditions of the deal. As part of that review, family members, who successfully sued to be recognized as crime victims in the case, met with federal prosecutors in April, only to emerge from the meeting frustrated and angry, convinced that Boeing would not be prosecuted.
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But weeks later, in a two-page letter sent to U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, Justice Department officials announced that Boeing had not met its obligations to establish systems to root out fraud in its operations. Prosecutors said they had not determined what the finding would mean for the aerospace giant. Boeing has denied that it is in breach of the agreement and has until July 13 to respond.
“The crazy thing is that the crashes happened more than five years ago and DOJ wasted the last three years with this” deferred prosecution agreement, said Ike Riffel, whose sons Melvin, 29, and Bennett, 26, were among five Americans who died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash. “We’re now three years further down the road and nothing has changed.”
Under the terms of the settlement, the department has until July 7 to decide how to proceed. Experts say prosecutors have several options: They could extend the length of the agreement and appoint an independent monitor to ensure Boeing complies with the terms. They could create a new agreement. The two sides could reach a plea deal. Or the case could go to trial.
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The meeting between the families and prosecutors came a day after Boeing executives met privately with FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker to present their plan to address shortcomings found during an audit that was done in the wake of the Alaska Airlines accident, as well as findings of an expert review panel that said Boeing’s safety reforms had fallen short of their aims. The company’s chief executive, David Calhoun, said the plan, which includes enhanced training for employees and specific measures for the company’s production system, will further strengthen Boeing’s commitment to safety.
On Friday, Riffel and others emerged from the meeting with mixed emotions. They said they were heartened by the opportunity to make their wishes known, frustrated that they received little clarity on how the Justice Department plans to move forward and exhausted from the emotional toll of their years-long campaign for accountability.
Robert Clifford, a Chicago-based attorney who is representing several families in civil litigation against Boeing, said Justice Department officials gave family members the opportunity to speak frankly about how the department should move forward in exchanges that were at times tense and emotional.
Chris Moore, who has refused to fly since the crash that killed his daughter, Danielle, and his wife, Clariss, drove from their home in Toronto to Washington to be at Friday’s meeting.
“I am hopeful,” Moore said after the meeting. “I have to be because hope is all I have left.”
