Boeing has settled for $ 2.5 billion with the US Department of Justice. The American aircraft manufacturer withheld information from the FAA aviation authority about the ‘disaster aircraft’ 737 MAX. The company did not open up, opting for profit instead, the ministry ruled.
About 500 million dollars will go to a special fund for the relatives of the victims. By far the most money goes to airlines who were unable to fly because the aircraft were grounded after the crashes.
Boeing CEO David Calhoun has acknowledged that the company has “failed.”
346 in two crashes
With the Boeing 737 MAX, two serious accidents occurred within six months, resulting in 346 deaths. In 2018, a 737 MAX plane crashed in Indonesia, followed by an accident in Ethiopia the following year. The cause of the crash was an automatic control system that pushed the nose of the aircraft down.
The US House of Representatives prepared a report on the Boeing 737 MAX. The main conclusion was that the corporate culture at Boeing was focused too much on profit rather than on safety. Boeing engineers made incorrect assumptions, the House’s transportation committee concluded, and management was not transparent enough. The Senate also came up with a hard report on the 737 MAX.
Last week, the aircraft took off in the US for the first time in twenty months. Authorities had grounded the 737 MAX for a long time after the crashes.
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