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Transportation Government

Boeing Fraud Violated Fatal MAX Crash Settlement, Says Justice Department, Seeking Guilty Plea on Criminal Charges (yahoo.com) 119

Posted by EditorDavid from the plane-speaking dept.
America's Justice Department "is pushing for Boeing to plead guilty to a criminal charge," reports Reuters, "after finding the planemaker violated a settlement over fatal 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people, two people familiar with the matter said on Sunday." Boeing previously paid $2.5 billion as part of the deal with prosecutors that granted the company immunity from criminal prosecution over a fraud conspiracy charge related to the 737 MAX's flawed design. Boeing had to abide by the terms of the deferred prosecution agreement for a three-year period that ended on Jan. 7. Prosecutors would then have been poised to ask a judge to dismiss the fraud conspiracy charge. But in May, the Justice Department found Boeing breached the agreement, exposing the company to prosecution.
A guilty plea could "carry implications for Boeing's ability to enter into government contracts," the article points out, "such as those with the U.S. military that make up a significant portion of its revenue..." The proposal would require Boeing to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in connection with the fatal crashes, the sources said. The proposed agreement also includes a $487.2 million financial penalty, only half of which Boeing would be required to pay, they added. That is because prosecutors are giving the company credit for a payment it made as part of the previous settlement related to the fatal crashes of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights. Boeing could also likely be forced to pay restitution under the proposal's terms, the amount of which will be at a judge's discretion, the sources said.

The offer also contemplates subjecting Boeing to three years of probation, the people said. The plea deal would also require Boeing's board to meet with victims' relatives and impose an independent monitor to audit the company's safety and compliance practices for three years, they said.
"Should Boeing refuse to plead guilty, prosecutors plan to take the company to trial, they said..." the article points out.

"Justice Department officials revealed their decision to victims' family members during a call earlier on Sunday."

Boeing Fraud Violated Fatal MAX Crash Settlement, Says Justice Department, Seeking Guilty Plea on Criminal Charges More | Reply

Boeing Fraud Violated Fatal MAX Crash Settlement, Says Justice Department, Seeking Guilty Plea on Criminal Charges

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  • "The proposed agreement also includes a $487.2 million financial penalty, only half of which Boeing would be required to pay, they added."

    Bullshit government math.

    So I only need to pay half my taxes now?

    • Re:Bullshit government math (Score:5, Informative)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @05:46PM (#64590725)

      "The proposed agreement also includes a $487.2 million financial penalty, only half of which Boeing would be required to pay, they added."

      Bullshit government math.
      So I only need to pay half my taxes now?

      Depends. Have you been given a credit for paying somewhere else, like Boeing? (Noted in literally the sentence following the one you quoted.)

      That is because prosecutors are giving the company credit for a payment it made as part of the previous settlement related to the fatal crashes of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights.

      Boeing will also probably pay something additional, imposed by the judge.

      Boeing could also likely be forced to pay restitution under the proposal's terms, the amount of which will be at a judge's discretion, the sources said.

    • Re:Bullshit government math (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @06:26PM (#64590823)

      So I only need to pay half my taxes now?

      How much of a gratuity have you paid to politicians?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      You probably do pay only a fraction of your taxes. Deductions and paycheck withholding generally cover most of it.

    • They already paid half the proposed penalty - kinda like giving a convicted criminal credit for time spent in jail awaiting trial, during trial, and awaiting sentencing.

      Did you even finish reading the entire sentence before posting your comment?

  • Prosecute the C suite (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Moof123 ( 1292134 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @05:48PM (#64590733)

    Decisions that killed people were made by humans. Punish those who made those decisions and those responsible for breaking the safety culture. Fines hurt the stockholders without creating good disincentives. Retaliation against whistleblowers in life safety situations should be tantamount to homicide and be treated as such.

    • Re:Prosecute the C suite (Score:4, Insightful)

      by retchdog ( 1319261 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @06:47PM (#64590865) Journal

      "Retaliation against whistleblowers in life safety situations should be tantamount to homicide..."

      the retaliation literally was homicide. twice.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        I don't think your accusation has actually been proven. It's quite plausible, though. (And the term would be "premeditated murder", not just homicide".)

        • homicide is the general term. all murders are homicides; not all homicides are murders.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jythie ( 914043 )
          Eh, not sure how plausible it is. The info was already out there, and as the hearsing showed, the csuite doesn't really care what anyone thinks. The csuite and board have a pipeline for extracting wealth from Boeing, and neither public opinion nor government regulation really impact that business model.
    • The greatest trick The devil ever pulled was convincing you he didn't exist. In this case the American ruling class has convinced the majority of Americans that we have no ruling class.

      You have to get really deep into alternative media to find out about the pipeline from legacy ivy League admissions into McKinsey and Goldman Sachs.

      There are some things so outside the Overton window that you can't even actually stop to think about them in any meaningful capacity. The idea that we have a hereditary c

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        Ah, but the American ruling class is differnt because they deserve to rule! Haven't you seen how much money they make?

        For a lot of people in America, capitalism and its social structures take on the same role as a religion. It defines who has what rights, who is above who, who is favored, and who has the merit to rule.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

          Prosperity theology is America's true religion. He's successful, so he must be right! It couldn't possibly be that the system is set up to permit the already rich to become richer, because it was created and further manipulated by the rich. That would be unamerican, because I think so!

      • You don't have to go into alternative media at all to understand this. Parents with resources try to set their kids up for success. You can find this out at any suburban preschool. The American ruling class is more fluid than most but less than many. It's possible to move into this group unlike true dynasties such as in the middle east. Look at Barack Obama. They guy went from a humble birth in Kenya to being president of the United States for goodness sake. Yes you have lower chances if you are born
      • No there has always been an obvious ruling class, the trick they pulled is you too can join us when your ship comes in.

    • Fines hurt the stockholders without creating good disincentives.

      On the contrary. Shareholders are already above the law in everything. Companies routinely break laws because shareholders tell them to. If the fines are not too expensive and the chances of a fine are not too big, it remains profitable to break the law, especially for shareholders.

      So the very least we can do to get back to law abiding companies is to punish evil shareholders in the only way that is currently possible: financially.

  • Hold individuals accountable (Score:5, Interesting)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @05:48PM (#64590737)

    The big problem with the Boeing settlements, like other settlements we've seen (Sacklers/Purdue Pharma) is how the company pays, but the PEOPLE WHO RUN THE COMPANY get away with it.

    The opposite should be the case, I believe. Individual misbehavior should not result in the collective punishment of a company's employees or stockholders (the latter of course are ultimately the billpayers for corporate fines.) As a matter of policy, if not a matter of law, a finding of corporate malfeasance should ALWAYS be accompanied by prosecutions of the individuals responsible for that malfeasance, whether through direct action or supervisory negligence.

    And that includes the tech industry, too.

    • Re:Hold individuals accountable (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @06:57PM (#64590893)

      "prosecutions of the individuals responsible for that malfeasance, whether through direct action or supervisory negligence"

      Well, that's the tricky part. You've got identify AND PROVE who the responsible party is, while everybody is pointing at somebody else and saying, "No, it was him." That's not simple. And it's no good saying, "It has to be someone," because you have to bring it home to a specific person or you've got nothing

      • Agreed, it is tricky, but that is the only path to true accountability. Diffused responsibility is the best hiding place of the scoundrel. And 1. I bet if you put the right bloodhounds on the scent you could find the responsible individuals and 2. If the system does not allow for such accountability, then they system needs to change.

        • While I'd argue that it's still tricky, I think the best answer to "diffused responsibility" is "diffused charges". IE hit everybody. If you find evidence that the diffusion of responsibility was deliberate, add conspiracy charges.
          Remember, surety of punishment is a better deterrent than severity.

      • Well if there's no one to blame then I have a solution.

        Boeing forfeits 25% ownership to the federal government. It happens again and this time the government now owns 51%.

        • Would be nice, but it's policy at least for the government not to invest directly in private or public companies. First, it sends a signal of favoritism. Second, if this allows some measure of control over the company the government will be accused loudly by many of being socialist. Instead the government lends money to some companies to encourage them, or gives research grants, etc. This keeps them hands-off from corporate governance.

          US did bail out GM, but as soon as GM went public again it started se

          • Would be nice, but it's policy at least for the government not to invest directly in private or public companies.

            That's fine, the problem can easily be solved through forced divestment, with the government obligated to sell it to the party that is plausibly the most responsible new owner, who will deliver the greatest benefit to The People. The only reason a corporation is supposed to even be able to exist is to benefit The People. If it doesn't do that, it should not receive a charter; if it doesn't do it year on year, then its charter should be terminated.

            • "deliver the greatest benefit to The People"

              What a wonderfully empty phrase. It can be defined to mean almost anything. Who gets to define exactly what this means in each case?

              • What a wonderfully empty phrase. It can be defined to mean almost anything. Who gets to define exactly what this means in each case?

                Our elected officials or their appointees, of course, which is why we're doomed, as virtually all of them are crony capitalists, because we vote like shit

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by grmoc ( 57943 )

            The government takes ownership of companies all the time for failure to pay taxes/fees.

        • nah, that is reserved for when they are not profitable anymore, see Bombardier.

      • Also, once they do this I guarantee they'll find one person they can live without and pin all the blame on him. That's the playbook some companies have used in the past.

      • Re:Hold individuals accountable (Score:4, Insightful)

        by HiThere ( 15173 ) <charleshixsn&earthlink,net> on Sunday June 30, 2024 @08:41PM (#64591057)

        Top management has the responsibility. They are definitely accessories before the fact, providing the enabling environment. Usually the board is at least guilty of criminal negligence. The actual hand that pulled the trigger is less significant than the one that ordered the trigger to be pulled.

        It is the JOB of top management to ENSURE that the organization they manage is not engaging in criminal acts.

        • But, of course, totally unrealistic. That's on the level of expecting the global head of IT of a bank to be responsible for every error in its software...

          • Why not? I know there's wide opposition to corporate liability for software failure in this community, but that doesn't mean it's what society at whole should accept.

            We as a community know what it takes to get substantially better quality in software. But managers are not willing to pay the cost, and software developers are not willing to change their ways and accept the discipline to "get it right" as opposed to "get it quick."

            Most of my career was spent doing mission critical and safety critical softw

            • You want a named executive to be responsible any mistake in software. That's unrealistic; there are always issues and even if the modules work fine, there's still the risk of a communications link causing an error due to latency etc etc. The route to breaking the 'get it quick' paradigm is to enforce civil judgements against the deploying organisation or the software supplier, creating a strong incentive on the defendant to 'get it right'.

              • Do you want a Boeing executive to be responsible when a worker fails to install bolts to hold a door panel in place?

                Managers are responsible for setting the processes. Executives are responsible for holding the managers accountable, funding both the development and the quality assurance processes, and generally for what happens in the corporation.

                I've been arguing for software liability and software engineer licensing (as both the means to -assume liability- and for -limiting liability-, the same way that

                • I was about to say it would slow innovation to a crawl, but then I realized: it is already slowed to a crawl. Look at the changes decades brought us from 1950 up to now, its been on the decline for a while. In the software world (web), we keep on rewriting the same things over and over and not building on existing technologies and improving. Maybe slowing down and enforcing quality could be a solution.

                • Do you want a Boeing executive to be responsible when a worker fails to install bolts to hold a door panel in place?

                  Do military style responsibility:
                  If ONE enlisted screws up, it's their fault.
                  If a significant number of enlisted screw up, it's the officer's fault, even if they didn't know anything about it. It was their responsibility to know, to set up conditions such that it didn't happen, etc...
                  A captain of a ship, for example, can be held responsible for their ship running aground even if it happens at night when they're sleeping, and their 2nd is in command.

                  In this case, the entire manufacturing system for planes i

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by necro81 ( 917438 )

        Well, that's the tricky part. You've got identify AND PROVE who the responsible party is, while everybody is pointing at somebody else and saying, "No, it was him." That's not simple. And it's no good saying, "It has to be someone," because you have to bring it home to a specific person or you've got nothing

        Sounds like a job for RICO [wikipedia.org].

        It's a way of collectively punishing the members of a criminal organization, even members that didn't directly do the crime in question. RICO statutes (there are multip

      • "prosecutions of the individuals responsible for that malfeasance, whether through direct action or supervisory negligence"

        Well, that's the tricky part. You've got identify AND PROVE who the responsible party is, while everybody is pointing at somebody else and saying, "No, it was him." That's not simple. And it's no good saying, "It has to be someone," because you have to bring it home to a specific person or you've got nothing

        And the problem is that we weren't privy to the real meat of the issue, which is that something turned the company culture from an aerospace company that happened to make money, to a company that demanded making money, and the products it built were a nuisance that got in the way, and the whole process had to be pared down in order to create more profit. The C-Suite should have been running a pizza company for all they cared.

        One thing is for certain, the concept of "The buck stops here" apparently doesn'

        • "And the problem is that we weren't privy to the real meat of the issue, which is that something turned the company culture from an aerospace company that happened to make money, to a company that demanded making money, and the products it built were a nuisance that got in the way, and the whole process had to be pared down in order to create more profit. "

          Actually, we know pretty much exactly when this happened. It was in 1997, when Boeing, at strong government urging, acquired the failing McDonnell-Dougl

        • Make golden parachutes reclaimable for a period of 10 years, of the policies you put in place caused the company to be sued.
          The real issue is the feedback mechanism: the current system favors this behavior be rewarding it. Humans are humans. May it be religion, corporations or government, its humans all the way down, with their inherent flaws.
          We see the same things with corps and externalities. Most of the top grossing corps would not make a penny if they were forced to deal with their externalities ( th

      • Well, that's the tricky part. You've got identify AND PROVE who the responsible party is, while everybody is pointing at somebody else and saying, "No, it was him." That's not simple. And it's no good saying, "It has to be someone," because you have to bring it home to a specific person or you've got nothing

        LOL, no, this is NOT the tricky part. There is a reason CEO's get paid huge amounts: they are taking all the risks. All we are talking about here is implementing the risk portion of it after paying them the handsome fees to be subjected to it: The CEO is ultimately accountable. Maybe nobody else goes down with the CEO, but the CEO absolutely IS going to be held responsible. It is where the buck stops, so to speak.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by grmoc ( 57943 )

          Most CEOs seem to skate, however. There are some exceptions, especially around provable (and mostly bank/securities) fraud.

      • Start at the top, the C suite and the board. Let them prove their innocence by proving that subordinates lied to them or disobeyed their orders. Then recursively go after the subordinates. That would send the right signal to all management.

      • Well, that's the tricky part. You've got identify AND PROVE who the responsible party is, while everybody is pointing at somebody else and saying, "No, it was him." That's not simple.

        Isn't this why there is a CEO who gets paid outrageous sums? To take responsibility when the organization as a whole fails...

    • Not possible (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
      Not with our current socio-political system. We do not spill the blood of kings and these men and women are kings and queens.

      Before that can happen you have to convince a majority of Americans that the American ruling class exists. We're not just fighting with one hand tied behind our back we don't even realize we're fighting in the first place

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      The chief technical pilot on the 737 MAX program was charged with felony fraud. He was acquitted.

    • Individual misbehavior should not result in the collective punishment of a company's employees or stockholders (the latter of course are ultimately the billpayers for corporate fines.)

      Yes, the shareholders absolutely must pay. Only the employers not involved in the malfeasance are innocent. The shareholders are the ones who make it possible for the C-suite to do evil, by funding it. And they ultimately MUST be incentivized to demand good behavior.

  • Boeing's story is evil. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @05:54PM (#64590747) Homepage

    Once upon a time there were two companies.

    Company A was McDonald Douglas They were mostly a military aircraft company that was more concerned with money.

    Company B was Boeing, a commercial aircraft company famed for their high quality.

    Boeing bought out McDonald Douglas. They then proceeded to make themselves more profitable. They moved their headquarters away from the factory, started doing share buy backs, and put the McDonald Douglas people in charge of quality.

    Which promptly went to hell. I hear that the people that make Boeing planes now refuse to fly in them.

    Boeing CEO and their entire board should be held responsible, fired and replaced with people from the factories with Engineering degrees, not a single MBA among them.

    • Re:Boeing's story is evil. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @07:38PM (#64590957)

      The McDonnell Douglas merge thing comes up a lot, and it does have some merit but people need to remember that Boeing was NOT a beacon of light before the merger either.

      In something eerily similar to the MCAS debacle (introduce major changes to an aircraft but dont require new training to cover them), Boeing introduced the 737 Classic in 1984 - new engines that needed major reconfiguration in order to fit them under the wing, aerodynamic changes, a switch to a digital cockpit...

      Big changes, but no new training required to fly the aircraft - and this resulted in the Kegworth Air Disaster of 1989, and the subsequent grounding of the Classic fleet.

      An engine failure, itself not fatal, combined with the redesigned instruments which placed the engine vibration instruments in a different place, as well as the auto-throttle systems, and the switching of the source of the cabin air, and no training on any of these things caused the pilots to shut down the good engine rather than the bad engine.

      The engine failure caused a lot of vibration to occur, but Boeing had moved the vibration instrumentation to a location not immediately obvious to the pilots, so they couldnt identify the correct engine from it.

      They identified the wrong engine through the air conditioning system, as the failed engine was causing smoke to enter the cabin and cockpit - but the pilots were familiar with the previous version of the aircraft which used air from the separate engines differently, so they thought the smoke was coming from the failed engine and due to their familiarity they thought this was the right-side engine. Unfortunately, that was the good engine, and the changes to the air conditioning system had both engines supplying cabin air...

      But shutting down the good engine caused two things to happen:

      1. the auto throttles had been compensating for the left engines partial failure by feeding it more fuel
      2. the auto throttles were disengaged during the shut down of the right-side engine

      The auto throttles compensating for the engine failure was not spotted because the throttles had not moved - they were stationary at the last selected setting chosen by the pilots. But the left throttle had increased to compensate for lower thrust.

      When the auto throttles were disengaged to switch off the right-side engine, the left engine reverted to its throttle-position setting, which reduced the load on it and caused the vibration and smoke to stop - the pilots thought this was the result of the shut down of the right-side engine.

      During diversion to the emergency landing airport, the pilots increased thrust again, which caused the left engine to fail completely. Realising their mistake, the pilots tried to restart the right-side engine but ultimately ran out of time and altitude.

      Then there was the 737 rudder reversal issues of the early 1990s - multiple crashes, Boeing denying any problems, but the NTSB ultimately found that the 737 was subject to rudder reversal under specific circumstances, a problem with the PCU involved was discovered and Boeing was instructed to resolve the issue.

      The 747-100 cargo door design issues that Boeing also knew about but failed to fix...

      Im not saying that Boeing should be vilified here, just that the rot that we are now so very publicly seeing, existed before the McDD merger.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Ssssh. You're spoiling the narrative.

        There's also the inconvenient fact that MD airplanes had safety records generally as good as or better than contemporary Boeing planes. But Boeing was a BELOVED LEGENDARY AMERICAN ICON and McDonnell Douglas was EVIL MONEY GRUBBING CAPITALIST SWINE.

        If it's not Boeing, I'm not going.

      • So sorry that upvoting stops at 5. Your post deserves more!

    • Two of the worst Boeing CEOs - one of them, in fact, responsible for this merger - were engineers who started their engineering careers at Boeing before the merger. The best CEO of Boeing was a lawyer.

  • That Boeing would have called ALL HANDS ON DECK and implemented an ethics program. WTF its not that hard. You hire a PR company to make a few ethics videos and require EVERYONE to watch them. the executives, managers, machinists and the guys who plunge the toilets. Everyone.

    And FFS they couldnt even manage to bump up their QC inspections? My god you would think something like this would register as a f&$kin existentialist threat. But apparently not.

    This is the sort of thing where the executives s

    • Re:You would think (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @06:11PM (#64590799) Journal

      Out of habit executives comply with the bare minimum of gov't regulation and oversight. You are repeatedly taught "government is evil" in rich white suit-land.

      • Except there's a legal agreement, and their lawyers would have known full well what non-compliance would mean. The only explainations would be that the legal team failed this effectively to the executives in charge, or the executives felt that the government was just bluffing. Either way, it paints the executives as ignoramuses.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rta ( 559125 )

      Not a fan of Boening's recent (decade+ turn), and IDK the details of to what degree they implemented a program just like you describe, but my sense is that Boeing complied w/ the stuff and that this is just the Biden DOJ is doing this because they don't like the Trump DOJ's original deal with Boeing and want a second bite at the apple.

      Why? because, as you point "compliance" is easy, and the cost of not doing it is huge. If there's one thing that companies like that understand and care about is how to not

      • I hope you’re right. If that’s the case and it’s just theatrics on the gov side, I hope it comes out quickly. Though, I’d be surprised if the government is being that petty. Boeing is quite literally too important to fail.

        • But Boeing has already failed, and is actively failing.

          • They make about half the jets on the planet, and there’s no company that could replace the output. Not this decade, and quite possibly not next decade either. Remember when it took Tesla a long time to spin up their EV manufacturing? Jets are a full two orders of magnitude harder. Unless a whole lot of companies and countries want to make do with half the number of new jets, yes, Boeing is too big to fail.

            Their problem is those two awful MAX crashes. If you pull those out of the equation, Boeing i

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by grmoc ( 57943 )

              . Someone else will take up the slack as there will be a huge market. Probably whosoever purchases Boeing's assets. There is plenty of capital out there if there is a market. If a corporation who dominated the market fails, the right thing for everyone is that something else replaces it.

  • They had one job (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @06:09PM (#64590797) Homepage Journal

    All they had to do is behave in the same decent legal manner expected of the rest of us. For just 3 years. And they just couldn't do it.

  • Meh ... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Savage-Rabbit ( 308260 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @06:25PM (#64590821)

    I wouldn't get too excited, the incoming Trump administration will make this go away, for a suitable fee of course.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Saffaya ( 702234 )

      Kinda like the US government never implemented judge Jackson's ruling on breaking up Microsoft.

  • A fine of less than 20% of that would seem inadequate.

  • Is what the families of victims were asking for.

    Half of $487 million isn't even close.

    Boeing grossed $76B in the last year, and netted $7.7B . $243M is just a slap on the wrist. If nobody is going to jail, it's hard to see how that fine will change anything.

  • The stock price will go up (Score:3)

    by Required Snark ( 1702878 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @07:17PM (#64590921)
    After the (bullshit) settlement is announced the stock price will go up since uncertainly will be gone. The company will announce that they have "put this unfortunate incident behind us" and "we have grown to be a better more responsible organization" or some equivalently meaningless corporate crap-speak.

    The C-suite will all get raises because someone hurt their feeling and they need the moral boost, and the board of directors will get even more just because. No current or former incompetent greed head exec will suffer any negative consequence, although someone far enough down the food chain will be sacrificed in pubic as a symbolic token of taking responsibility.

    Whistle blowers will be paid off to keep quite and/or be permanently kicked out of employment in any business sector, except a fast food franchise. The court appointed monitor will be 100% insulated from any real knowledge of what's going on and they will no be around log enough to effect any kid of change. The probation period will also be too short to be effective.

    All the Congressional asses who where screaming in public will get even larger black money contributions from Boeing and other aerospace firms because they will continue to do their part and cut back regulations.

    In short it's business as usual.

  • Guilty Plea on Criminal Charges (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @07:26PM (#64590941)

    Not going to happen. Sure, the DoJ will get a few hundred million in penalties and a consent degree to never, NEVER do it again (And we really mean it this time. Pinky swear). But there won't be a criminal guilty verdict or plea. Because that would block Boeing from entering into new government contracts for a good period of time. And that will hurt the government as much if not more than Boeing.

    I'd like to see a criminal charge. Because that is what has at least some chance of fixing the company. Split Boeing Military/Aerospace from Boeing Commercial. Find Boeing Commercial guilty and let the Military/Aerospace company go on selling missiles and bombs to the DoD and NASA. Airbus can sell some airliner platforms to our government as needed (the refueling tanker was almost an A330).

  • The beauty of defanging regulatory agencies is (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Beeftopia ( 1846720 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @09:33PM (#64591109)

    The beauty of defanging regulatory agencies is that industry doesn't have to spend money trying to create "regulatory capture [google.com]", i.e. buying their regulatory agency. Going forward, industry will have to pay politicians to write more favorable laws, and hire superior lawyers to defeat the government ones.

  • I worked there until a couple weeks ago. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mmell ( 832646 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @10:53PM (#64591207)
    Won't get too specific, but suffice it to say the C-Suite is in charge there. Has been since the turn of the century (or slightly before, it's hard to tell when Boeing was stricken with that particular malady). I just started pulling unemployment, I'm just waiting until the dust settles and I know my unemployment won't get screwed up to go to state L&I to tell 'em about what I saw out there. It's a sweet little claptrap but some of the players running it for them aren't the brightest bulbs in the string. Boeing and some of their business partners fully deserve what they're getting.

    I have documents. X^D

    • Make sure you have a lot of copies of the documents cached with a lot of different people. Be paranoid. If you've enough to do serious damage, take out life insurance...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mmell ( 832646 )
        I've been a UNIX System Engineer for over a decade, I've been in IT for nearly four decades . . . paranoid is part of the job description.
    • I'd wish you health and a long life but those and being a Boeing whistle blower don't play well together.

  • The plea deal would also require Boeing's board to meet with victims' relatives

    Is this some new sort of penalty? I've never heard of convicted criminals being forced to meet with their victims. Sounds like a great way to really 'stick it' to the board members, but are the board members really responsible for the actions that led to the fatal accidents, or the corner-cutting middle managers and line-workers?

    Will the airline buyers that chose to not buy the 2nd/backup sensor on the planes that crashed be forced to face the victim's families also?

  • The search form had a check box where you could filter out routes that would have you flying Boeing.

    That's Boeing today. And there still ain't anybody serving time in the slammer to pay for that shitshow and its victims.

  • DoJ just wants another notch on their Colt.

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