Airplane manufacturer Boeing will be brought to federal court in Texas on Thursday on a criminal charge of conspiracy with the motive of committing fraud related to the crashes of two 737 Max commercial jets in Indonesia back in 2018 and in Ethiopia in 2019. This incident had killed around about 345 people as such.
Callous And Cruel
The U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor presiding over the Northern District of Texas ordered Boeing just last week to be publicly arraigned based on the very serious and solemn felony charge, adding that the company “has no right to waive its appearance.” The judge also allowed family members of the ones murdered during this crash to be heard during the court proceedings saying that federal as well as criminal court rules require that this Court be publicly arraign Boeing and make sure that the crime victims’ community members and closed ones are listened to before any action is taken.
Around 10 family members of the deceased had notified the court that they want to be heard including this one woman in particular, Naoise Connolly Ryan from Ireland, whose husband Michael, 39, was killed in the Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max plane crash that took place on March 10, 2019. That abrasively depressing event happened less than five months after the Oct. 29, 2018 crash of a Lion Air 737 Max jet in Indonesia and has set the entire country in a state of shock and disbelief.
Investigators have blamed both these crashes as being a flawed automated flight control system that took the next steps from a single most sensor and forced the planes into uncontrollable nose dives. Federal prosecutors accused Boeing of lying to the FAA about the entire system. He is accused of hiding material information when the regulatory agency was certifying the 737 Max.
Tiny Brink Of Hope
“Misleading statements, half-truths, and omissions communicated by Boeing employees to the FAA impeded the government’s ability to ensure the safety of the flying public,” prosecutors said in the Court of law. Boeing finally admitted to deceiving the FAA by not talking openly about the safety problems with the 737 Max and vividly agreed to pay $2.5 billion in fines as well as compensation to the airlines as well as the relatives of the crash victims.
The agreement also made sure that Boeing made important changes when it came to safety policies and proceedings. Many people have notified that the culture in the company is such that proper focus is given to garnering profits more than safety. The families of the deceased petitioned the court to turn over the deal and argued that under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, they should have been asked about what they wanted and those inputs must have been in the agreement.
After a few days of ifs and buts, Judge O’Connor sided with the families, ruling that since they are legally the victims of crime and their rights were taken improper advantage of and that they should have been consulted, before everything else. However, the Judge hasn’t reopened the deferred prosecution agreement yet.
