Boeing Victims’ Anger: Inside the Room As Sweetheart Deal Was Announced

As the bereaved families of those who died in Boeing aeroplane crashes gathered around a screen, there was a palpable sense of anticipation in the room.

On a WebEx call with the Department for Justice, they waited with bated breath for the details of a sweetheart deal that had been offered to the aeronautical giant in the wake of two fatal air disasters in which hundreds of their loved ones died.

And then the details came.

“There was an uproar,” Nadia Milleron told Newsweek.

Her daughter, Samya, was onboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 when the Boeing 737’s faulty flight control system caused the plane to enter a nosedive.

All 157 individuals onboard, 149 passengers and eight crew members, died in the crash.

“They’re so out of touch. I don’t know if they are being disingenuous, or they really thought we weren’t going to be very pleased with these things,” she said.

The deal agreed saw Boeing avoid trial by pleading guilty and accepting various monitoring measures. It will also pay a fine that victims groups have told Newsweek is unlikely to trouble a company with an annual revenue north of $70 billion.

Milleron was joined by lawyers and other victims’ family members on the June 30 call. By Sunday Boeing had accepted the deal.

If approved by a federal judge, Boeing will plead guilty to one count of fraud, pay a $243.6 million fine, undergo three years of safety monitoring, and invest at least $455 million over the next three years in improving its safety and compliance initiatives.

According to Milleron, the families on the call told the Department of Justice that they objected to the terms of the three-year probation, which one lawyer previously told Newsweek would allow Boeing to “hand-select the monitor.”

“We said, wait. Boeing is just going to choose its own slave…and then the Department of Justice chooses from them? I said no. And we all said no.”

She went on to say that the DOJ altered this in the final plea agreement, though Boeing will still have a hand in selecting its own monitor.

However, Milleron said that the families are asking for two monitors to oversee Boeing’s operations, one to examine the construction of aircraft, and another to look at the company’s safety culture.

Milleron also called the $243.6 million financial penalty “a slap on the wrist” for the aerospace giant.

“It allows them to continue on with their bad behavior, because fines are the cost of doing business for Boeing,” Milleron added.

The agreement also requires the company’s board of directors to meet with the families of the 346 people who died in the 2018 Lion Air crash and the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash.

While Milleron said that this was a good step, she considers it largely pointless.

“I would just say you guys are all bad, and that you should leave and get a new board of directors,” Milleron told Newsweek.

Milleron recalled the time when outgoing Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun was forced to confront the families during his testimony before the Senate subcommittee on investigations in June.

Dave Calhoun apologized to Clariss Moore, whose daughter died in the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash, causing her to burst into tears.

“How would you react? If you said you were sorry to somebody for something you did and they burst into tears? What would you do next? Would you turn away from them? Would you turn on your heel in a rapid movement away from them? That just says it all. He’s not sorry. He’s just going through the motions.”

Glen Leon, chief of the DOJ Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, was the official tasked with disclosing the details of the deal to the families on the call, and was apparently surprised by the families outrage.

“He said, What’s the difference? They’re going to plead guilty. What’s the difference between pleading guilty to a plea deal and going to trial?” Milleron said.

But Milleron considers a trial crucial for remedying the company’s broken safety culture.

Tracy Brammeier, an attorney at Clifford Law who represents some of the family members, spoke to Newsweek about the deal.

“While a guilty plea is significant and certainly a move in the right direction by the Boeing Company from their prior stance, they still feel that Boeing is getting let off the hook. Boeing is having to answer for defrauding the FAA, but not for the 346 deaths from the two crashes,” Brammeier said.

As soon as Boeing agreed to the plea deal, the family members filed a notice with the District Court in the Northern District of Texas, signaling their intention to object to the agreement before Judge O’Connor.

Milleron said that they will have the chance to do so in around three weeks, allowing time for the hundreds of family members to obtain visas and organize travel plans to the U.S.

“The bottom line of the story, is that the public thinks that Boeing pleaded guilty and that we got justice. But that isn’t what happened,” Milleron told Newsweek. “Boeing pleaded guilty to another sweetheart deal, in which they never mentioned any of the deaths. And they got a little correction, but not enough to really address the safety issues.”

Officials charged Boeing after it violated an earlier agreement that had enabled it to avoid prosecution over crashes involving the 737 MAX jets.

Do you have a story we should be covering? Do you have any questions about this article? ContactLiveNews@newsweek.com.