Lawyers for the families of the victims of two 737 Max crashes said Sunday that U.S. prosecutors have asked Boeing to plead guilty to charges related to the two crashes, and criticized the potential agreement as a “sweetheart deal,” according to CNBC.
It is not yet clear whether Boeing will accept the plea deal.
The U.S. Justice Department said in May it was reviewing whether Boeing violated a 2021 settlement that shielded Boeing from federal charges. The company agreed to pay a $2.5 billion fine for conspiracy related to the crashes of its best-selling 737 Max jet in 2018 and 2019, which killed all 346 people on board.
The Justice Department had reconsidered the agreement after a door panel on a new 737 Max 9 exploded during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, sparking a new safety and quality control crisis for one of the world’s largest commercial aircraft suppliers.
Boeing admitted that two of its pilots defrauded the FAA by concealing the addition of a new flight-control system to the planes before they were commercially available. The department noted in 2021 that the system was later implicated in the two crashes.