Families of Boeing crash victims to make potential final plea for criminal prosecution

DALLAS — A hearing set for Wednesday in federal court in Texas could provide families of the victims killed in two crashes of Boeing 737 Max jetliners with their final opportunity to demand that the company face criminal prosecution. U.S. District Chief Judge Reed O'Connor will hear arguments on a motion by the federal government to dismiss a felony fraud charge against Boeing in connection with the crashes that killed 346 people off the coast of Indonesia and in Ethiopia. In exchange, Boeing said it would pay or invest another $1.1 billion in fines, compensation for the crash victims’ families, and internal safety and quality measures. Prosecutors have said that Boeing deceived government regulators about a flight-control system that was later implicated in the fatal flights, which happened less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019. The hearing in Fort Worth comes more than four years after the Justice Department first announced it had charged Boeing in January 2021 and reached a $2.5 billion settlement with the aircraft maker. That deal would have protected Boeing from criminalWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times