US Justice Ministry accuses Boeing of violating regulations after fatal crashes
The US Department of Justice sees deficiencies in the implementation of requirements at Boeing. The aviation company is facing further criminal proceedings.
A Boeing 737 Max in flight.
(Image: Boeing)
The fatal crashes of two Boeing 737 Max airplanes in October 2018 and March 2019 have another repercussion: In a letter to a US court (PDF) on Tuesday, the Department of Justice accuses the US aircraft manufacturer Boeing of violating requirements (United States v. The Boeing Company, 4:21-cr-00005). According to the letter, Boeing failed to develop, implement and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent or detect violations of U.S. fraud laws in Boeing's business.
Boeing now has until June 13 to officially respond to the allegations. In a brief statement, the aviation company denied all allegations in advance. By its own admission, Boeing had complied with all requirements. The US Department of Justice is apparently awaiting Boeing's response and intends to decide how to proceed by July 7 at the latest.
Penalty payment from Boeing
The investigations are related to two Boeing 737 Max airplane crashes in which a total of 346 people lost their lives. The investigations revealed that the control software of the two aircraft was faulty and had interfered too much with the aircraft controls. As the investigation revealed, Boeing had failed to provide training for the software during the certification process by the relevant authorities. Boeing had to pay a fine of 243 million US dollars.
Boeing was accused of defrauding the US authorities in its disclosures, so the aviation company was required to introduce a compliance and ethics program to prevent such incidents in the future. In return, the fraud was not pursued further.
The US Department now sees a possible breach of this requirement, which means that the allegations of fraud may be investigated again and prosecuted.
Production errors and quality defects
The story of the Boeing 737 Max is a series of unfortunate circumstances. After the investigation into the two plane crashes, Boeing had to improve the technology. This led to a worldwide grounding, a long outage and high financial losses. The next problem followed in January 2024. A Boeing 737 Max 9 lost a door during the flight, but was able to land safely. The aircraft was then grounded. Investigations revealed that several aircraft of this type had production and quality defects. On the aircraft in question, for example, the retaining bolts for the door were missing. Boeing then tightened its quality control after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) also pointed this out.
(olb)