US appeals court denies bid from families of Boeing 737 Max crash victims to reopen criminal case

A federal appeals court has denied a request from dozens of families who lost relatives in two fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes to reopen a criminal case against the aircraft manufacturer.

Lawyers for the families had argued that the Department of Justice failed to properly consult them before reaching a deal last year with Boeing that led a lower court to dismiss a criminal conspiracy charge against the company. The charge stemmed from allegations that Boeing misled federal regulators about a flight-control system linked to the crashes, which killed 346 people.

In a unanimous decision released Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it disagreed with the families’ claims that federal prosecutors had violated their rights under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act and therefore could not revive the case.

Paul Cassell, a lawyer for the families, called the ruling “badly flawed.”

“Today’s ruling means that Boeing escapes criminal justice accountability for killing 346 people,” Cassell said Tuesday in a statement. “The victims’ families were never given a meaningful opportunity to shape the negotiations between the Justice Department and Boeing, dating back to 2020.”

Boeing said Tuesday it had no comment, but at a hearing last month in New Orleans before the appellate court, company attorney Paul Clement said more than 60 other families “affirmatively supported” the deal and dozens more did not oppose it.

“Boeing deeply regrets” the tragic crashes, Clement had said, and “has taken extraordinary steps to improve its internal processes and has paid substantial compensation” to the victims’ families.

The deal allowed Boeing to avoid prosecution in exchange for paying or investing an additional $1.1 billion in fines, compensation to victims’ families, and internal safety and quality measures.

At the same hearing, federal prosecutors told the judges that the government has, for years, “solicited and weighed the views of the crash victims’ families as it’s decided whether and how to prosecute the Boeing Company.”

All passengers and crew died when the 737 Max jets crashed less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019 — a Lion Air flight that plunged into the sea off the coast of Indonesia and an Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed into a field shortly after takeoff.

The criminal case had taken many twists and turns. The Justice Department first charged Boeing in 2021 with defrauding the government but agreed not to prosecute if the company paid a settlement and took steps to comply with anti-fraud laws.

Federal prosecutors later determined in 2024 that Boeing had violated that agreement, and the company agreed to plead guilty to the charge. But U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas, who oversaw the case for years, rejected the plea deal and directed the two sides to resume negotiations.

The Justice Department returned last May with the new deal and a request to withdraw the criminal charge altogether, which O’Connor approved in November. The Justice Department argued that going to trial carried the risk that a jury might acquit Boeing entirely, leaving the company without further punishment.

In dismissing the case, O’Connor said federal prosecutors hadn’t acted in bad faith and had explained their decision and met their obligations under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.

O’Connor also said that case law prevented him from blocking the dismissal simply because he disagreed with the government’s view that the new deal with Boeing served the public interest.

The case centered around a software system that Boeing developed for the 737 Max, which airlines began flying in 2017. Boeing billed it as an update to its 737 family that wouldn’t require much additional pilot training.

But the Max did include significant changes, some of which Boeing downplayed — most notably, the addition of an automated flight-control system designed to help account for the plane’s larger engines. Boeing didn’t mention the system in airplane manuals, and most pilots didn’t know about it.

In both of the deadly crashes, that software pitched the nose of the plane down repeatedly based on faulty readings from a single sensor, and pilots flying for Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines were unable to regain control. After the Ethiopia crash, the planes were grounded worldwide for 20 months.

Investigators found that Boeing did not inform key Federal Aviation Administration personnel about changes it had made to the software before regulators set pilot training requirements for the Max and certified the airliner for flight.

“One can only hope that another Boeing crash won’t be the outcome of this badly flawed ruling,” Cassell, the lawyer for the families, said Tuesday.