NEW YORK: Relatives of passengers who died in the twin Boeing 737 MAX crashes are scheduled to confront the airplane maker on Thursday in a US court, about four years after the tragedies in Ethiopia and Indonesia.
Boeing and its top executives deserve no such relief, argue attorneys for the families, who also plan to ask the court to establish an independent monitor because"the Justice Department cannot be trusted to monitor Boeing", they say in a brief. In unveiling the agreement, DOJ said Boeing was being held accountable for"fraudulent and deceptive" conduct towards Federal Aviation Administration regulators during the MAX certification when the company omitted key facts about the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System , a flight handling system that badly malfunctioned in both crashes.
"In sum, but for Boeing's criminal conspiracy to defraud the FAA, 346 people would not have lost their lives in the crashes," O'Connor wrote.Adding to the families' momentum has been the Securities and Exchange Commission, which in September fined Boeing US$200 million for misleading investors about the MAX.