US agrees to drop criminal case over Boeing crashes in $1.1 billion deal

Boeing reached a $1.1 billion deal with the US Justice Department Friday to avoid a criminal trial over its role in two 737 Max crashes that killed 346 people.

While the planemaker agreed to plead guilty as part of a deal with the Biden administration last year, this agreement, which is yet to be finalized, would see Boeing “admit to conspiracy to obstruct and impede” federal regulators, without facing criminal prosecution.

Family members of the crashes’ victims in Ethiopia and Indonesia criticized the deal, with a lawyer for some saying, “You had a criminal who said, ‘I want to plead guilty to a crime.’ And now all of the sudden, six or seven months later, the government is saying we just decided that they can pay and we’re going to drop the case.”