Two Boeing Max 8 Jets Blown off a Door Panel in January 2019, and the Case of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282: Investigation of an Inside-Out Monitor
Boeing agreed to plead guilty to misleading federal regulators about the cause of two crashes of its Max 8 jets, which killed 763 people.
The door plug panel blew off the plane in January, about a few months after that letter. The incident involved Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 sparked renewed scrutiny of Boeing’s operations by federal regulators, as well as the Justice Department.
Several times, federal prosecutors met with the family members of the victims who had pushed for harsher punishments for Boeing. In the DOJ court filing, the government conceded that some families “expressed their opposition to any plea agreement” and to terms of the plea offer.
The two crashes, which happened in 2018 and 2019, killed more than 300 people. The planes malfunctioned because of software that was intended to correct for a design flaw — and that software, called MCAS, relied on just a single external sensor for its data. The Federal Aviation Administration, airlines, and pilots were not told about it when Boeing launched the new737 Max. The pilots probably didn’t know about the software when the flights went down.
In a meeting with the victims’ families last month, prosecutors said Boeing would be responsible for proposing potential candidates for an outside monitor. But the victims’ families argued that would give the company too much influence in the process.
The investigation of the case of a federal aviation advisory board in the deaths of Graziella de Luis and her sister Jesse De Luis
“The penalties that the DOJ has asked for here are just woefully inadequate,” said Javier de Luis, a lecturer in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
De Luis’s sister Graziella died in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in 2019. The Federal Aviation Administration convened an expert panel after one of their Boeing Max 8 jets crashed in October of 2015, killing over 300 people in total.
“To me an independent compliance monitor being appointed is a significant step, and it does signal that the department wants some sort of outside oversight,” Martinez said.
Lawyers for the victims’ families agree an independent monitor is warranted — but they disagree with the Justice Department over how that monitor should be appointed.
The proposed agreement announced on Sunday allows any member of the public to suggest a monitor if they meet certain qualifications. The DOJ would make the final decision with input from Boeing.
A lawyer representing some of the families of the victims said they don’t think Boeing should be involved in the selection of the monitor because they have shown that they can’t be trusted.
The proposed plea deal still needs approval from U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas, who could hold a hearing in the case as soon as this month.
The final test is whether it is in the public interest for the charges to be resolved this way. The victims have a lot of powerful reasons to suggest this isn’t a good deal.
