That left many victims’ families feeling like the Justice Department had failed to listen to them — on Sunday and over the last several months.

If Boeing accepts the deal, the Justice Department would notify a federal district judge in Texas, where the deferred prosecution agreement was signed. Judge Reed O’Connor has to approve the deal in order for it to move forward.

Cassell said the victims’ families are prepared to file an objection.

Though the deal would require Boeing to admit to defrauding safety regulators, Cassell said it does not link Boeing’s actions to the deaths.

“The Justice Department and Boeing have cooked up a deal where they’re saying no loss was caused by Boeing,” Cassell said. “That’s why we’re going to be so strenuously objecting.”

What happened in 2021

The Justice Department charged Boeing in 2021 with defrauding federal safety regulators by failing to disclose information about a new software system on the Max planes. An error with that software — the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS — caused two Max planes to nosedive and crash, first in Indonesia in October 2018 and then in Ethiopia in March 2019.

The ensuing agreement allowed the company to avoid criminal prosecution if it met certain conditions. Those conditions included setting up an ethics compliance program, updating its policies around safety and providing consistent reports to the Justice Department about its progress. The deferred prosecution agreement expired in January.

While the agreement was still in place, Boeing faced another safety incident when a panel blew off a 737 Max plane midflight, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the aircraft. The January blowout, which occurred on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 out of Portland, reignited scrutiny of whether Boeing had made the promised changes to improve its safety culture following the fatal Max crashes.

Boeing has said it believes it has met its obligations under the 2021 agreement, and the company has continued to “engage transparently” with the Justice Department, according to a spokesperson.

Javier de Luis, who lost his sister in the second Max crash and was part of an expert panel convened by the Federal Aviation Administration to study Boeing’s safety culture following the crashes, said the Justice Department’s proposed penalties were “totally inadequate.”

The proposal presented Sunday is “essentially the same as those proposed under the previous DPA,” de Luis said, “which, as Alaska Air demonstrated, did nothing to increase the safety of the flying public.”

Earlier this month, before the Justice Department had determined how it would move forward, the families asked federal prosecutors to appoint an independent monitor and to fine Boeing $24.8 billion.

In 2021, as part of its agreement with the Justice Department, Boeing paid just over $2.5 billion. Most of that was compensation to airline customers that the company had already agreed to pay.

Of the total, Boeing paid $1.77 billion to airline customers, $500 million in compensation to the families who lost loved ones and $244 million as a fine to the U.S. government for the criminal conduct.

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