In the wake of a nearly disastrous midair blowout aboard a Boeing 737 MAX, federal prosecutors may reopen a criminal probe brought against the airplane manufacturer following two fatal MAX crashes.
Before a Wednesday meeting in Washington, D.C., with the families who lost loved ones in those deadly crashes five years ago, prosecutors said they had not yet decided whether to pursue criminal claims. But, after the closed-door meeting, families remained skeptical that the Justice Department would hold Boeing accountable — even after an assembly mistake imperiled another 737 MAX jet over Portland in January.
“Today’s meeting with the DOJ has left me quite disheartened,” said Zipporah Kuria, who lost her father Joseph Waithaka in the 2019 crash in Ethiopia.
Kuria, who lives in London, said the Justice Department was supposed to provide the “semblance of justice, the one place we thought we could speak and be heard and be understood.” Now, Kuria said, it feels as if federal prosecutors have prioritized allegiances to companies over justice for the families who lost loved ones in the MAX crashes.
“It’s not about justice anymore. It’s not about the miscarriage of justice for us anymore,” she continued. “It’s about the public safety.”
The criminal case against Boeing was put on hold three years ago when the company entered into an agreement with prosecutors allowing Boeing to avoid criminal charges if it met certain conditions. The January incident, during which a panel blew off a Boeing MAX plane, occurred days before that agreement was set to expire.
Though the blowout did not spark the Justice Department’s meeting with the MAX crash victims’ families, it offered a high-profile example that left many wondering if Boeing had violated the terms of its deferred prosecution agreement. If it had, prosecutors again would be able to bring a criminal claim against the company.
The Justice Department, which declined to comment on Wednesday, is expected to make a decision in the next six weeks, attorneys representing the families said. Federal prosecutors have said they will give Boeing and the families of those who died a heads up before appearing in a Texas court in July to either ask a judge to dismiss criminal claims against Boeing or to pursue the charges.
Catherine Berthet, whose 28-year-old daughter Camille Geoffroy died in the Ethiopia Airlines 302 crash, traveled from France to attend the meeting in person to show the Justice Department that the families have “not forgiven” and “are not forgetting.”
“I don’t want them to think that we’ll make it the easy way,” Berthet said in an interview with The Seattle Times before the meeting. “I’m here because we want accountability.”
A meeting ‘all for show’
After two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019, Boeing faced one federal charge of criminal misconduct. The Justice Department said Boeing employees misled regulatory officials from the Federal Aviation Administration about a new flight control system on the MAX planes. In each crash, that software — the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation Systems, or MCAS — activated erroneously and caused the planes to nosedive, killing a total of 346 people.
In 2021, the criminal case against Boeing was put on hold when the company signed on to a deferred prosecution agreement that allowed it to avoid criminal charges if it met certain conditions for three years, including strengthening its quality oversight and promising to report any fraud allegations.
The families who lost loved ones in the MAX crashes widely criticized that agreement, arguing that it let Boeing off the hook for its role in the accidents and that the Justice Department illegally brokered the agreement without conferring with the families of victims.
At a meeting earlier this month, federal prosecutors told attorneys representing the victim’s families from the MAX crashes that they had not yet determined if Boeing had breached the agreement. The Justice Department hoped Wednesday’s meeting with the families would help lend input for that decision, the attorneys said.
Among many considerations, federal prosecutors are still determining whether Boeing provided “deliberately false, incomplete or misleading information” during the three years the agreement had been in place.
On Wednesday, the families participated in two sessions with federal prosecutors. They met first with attorneys from the Justice Department’s fraud section and other members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and then with Nicole Argentieri, principal deputy assistant attorney general for the criminal division, and Leigha Simonton, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, where the deferred prosecution agreement was filed.
Paul Cassell, an attorney who is representing the victims’ families, said in a statement that the day was just “what we feared — all for show and without substance.”
“It is clear that [the Justice Department is] only interested in seeing through the rigged Deferred Prosecution Agreement they brokered with Boeing without the involvement of the very families whose lives were shattered due to the company’s fraud and misconduct,” Cassell said. “We will pursue every avenue to continue our challenge of the DPA and ensure Boeing is truly held accountable.”
Yalena Lopez-Lewis, who lost her husband, Army Capt. Antoine Lewis, in the 2019 crash, said Wednesday that she is most disappointed by the lack of transparency from Justice Department.
“To be met with so many ‘I don’t knows,’ ‘I haven’t read this report,’ ‘I’m unaware,’ is unacceptable,” she said. “I don’t think we’re getting anywhere with them.
“They say they hear us, but I don’t feel heard.”
‘I was like a stone’
When Berthet, who lost her daughter in the 2019 crash, first learned of the agreement between the Justice Department and Boeing, she couldn’t believe that the Justice Department had signed such a deal before a discussion with the families who lost loved ones.
Now, as the Justice Department once again considers the terms of the agreement, she pointed to recent reports and Congressional hearings related to both the MAX crashes and the January blow out as evidence that the Justice Department should pursue criminal claims against the company.
In February, an expert panel commissioned by the FAA found that Boeing’s safety culture still needed substantial upgrades. Experts from the panel told members of Congress earlier this month that Boeing employees were fearful of retaliation if they raised safety concerns and that most didn’t know how they fit into Boeing’s safety plan.
On the same day, a Boeing engineer accused the company of hiding safety risks on other airplane models. This week, Boeing’s white-collar union alleged company management retaliated against engineers overseeing design work on behalf of the FAA.
Boeing denies charges of retaliation and disputed allegations about safety risks on some of its planes. The company declined to comment Wednesday.
Berthet’s daughter, Camille, was working in humanitarian aid at the time of the crash. Berthet was used to her daughter leaving for months at a time and returning home for 10-day visits, but the two exchanged messages daily.
Losing Camille was like losing a part of herself, Berthet said.
In the past, she has marked the anniversary of her daughter’s death with protests outside of Boeing HQ, now in Arlington, Va., and video calls with other families who lost loved ones from the MAX crashes. This year, she spent the day helping her 21-year-old son study for an engineering exam, and was grateful for the busy day.
She didn’t read the news for months after Camille’s death. It wasn’t until she learned that the MAX planes had been grounded — signifying a broader problem — that she began talking with other families and lawyers.
During that first year, “I was not myself. I was not aware of anything. I was like a stone,” Berthet said. Then she began fighting to hold Boeing accountable, and five years later, she’s still in that battle.
She’s had to put her emotions on pause, focusing on settlements and deferred prosecution agreements rather than the daughter she lost.
“What I most, very heartily, miss is to be able to cry,” Berthet said. “I want to cry — I need to cry — but I can’t. If I cry, if I go deeper, deeper in my heart and I really think about her, I can’t fight.”
“If I want to be efficient, and to help. … I can’t be with her.”
The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.