New York:

The Department of Justice said that Boeing can be prosecuted for violating a 2021 criminal settlement over the certification of the 737 MAX.

The DOJ determination, filed in US court in Texas on Tuesday, comes on the heels of a near-catastrophic Alaska Airlines flight in January that made an emergency landing after a panel on the fuselage blew out.

US officials gave Boeing until June 13 to respond with input the United States “shall consider in determining whether to pursue prosecution of (Boeing).”

What was the 2021 settlement?

In January 2021, the Department of Justice announced a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) in which Boeing agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle fraud charges over certification of the 737 MAX, which experienced two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 that together claimed 346 lives.

In addition to the financial penalties, the agreement required Boeing to strengthen its compliance program, meet regularly with US anti-fraud officials and submit annual reports documenting its progress.

The agreement, announced on January 7, 2021 in the waning days of Donald Trump’s administration, was designed to expire after three years if Boeing met its requirements.

What did DOJ conclude?

The letter from DOJ to US Judge Reed O’Connor said the agency determined Boeing “breached its obligations” under the DPA, citing a number of provisions in the accord.

These included measures requiring Boeing to implement a compliance and ethics program, beef up its internal controls “to effectively detect and deter violations of US fraud laws” and prohibit Boeing from providing “deliberately false, incomplete or misleading” information about its compliance.

Other provisions require Boeing leaders to model excellent behavior supporting compliance as part of creating and fostering “a culture of ethics.”

Is this a result of the Alaska Airlines problem?

The DOJ letter did not mention the Alaska Airlines incident, which has spurred “multiple governmental and regulatory investigations,” according to a Boeing securities filing.

The Alaska Airlines incident follows numerous other unflattering revelations about Boeing manufacturing problems and complaints from whistleblowers, heightening scrutiny of the company.

The FAA in January opened an investigation following the Alaska Airlines episode on whether jets delivered by Boeing “were in condition for safe operation.”

The FAA on February 28 gave Boeing 90 days to develop “a comprehensive action plan to address its systemic quality-control issues to meet FAA’s non-negotiable safety standards.”

What punishments does Boeing face?

Family members of the 737 MAX victims, who have slammed the 2021 agreement as a mere slap on the wrist, have called for prosecution of Boeing and top officials, as well as the appointment of an independent monitor.

DOJ is set to gather input from victims at a meeting on May 31.

Columbia Law School Professor John Coffee said straightforward remedies for DOJ could include extending the DPA and appointing a monitor with extensive oversight capacities, but considers prosecution of senior executives unlikely.

How does DOJ’s action affect the crisis at Boeing?

The DOJ’s action adds to pressure on Boeing, which has reported a string of financial losses and has significantly slowed its delivery of new jets while it addresses quality control issues.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said the DPA failed to address Boeing’s “rotten corporate culture” because it held “no one accountable,” adding that he looks forward to hearing from Boeing leaders at a hearing.

Blumenthal and other lawmakers critical of Boeing have characterized the company’s success as essential, alluding to economic and national security priorities.

Coffee cited an “economic” rationale for not criminally prosecuting Boeing.

“The company is badly injured and a criminal trial would get considerable attention, causing even greater economic damage and possibly fueling a backlash from retail passengers,” Coffee said in an email.

“Air carriers would be scared of a world in which Boeing shrank into relative insignificance, leaving Airbus holding a monopoly and predictably charging higher prices.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New York:

Boeing has been in the headlines lately following a series of problems with its aircraft, with the most recent incidents in Turkey and Senegal.

The episodes, which follow a near-disastrous panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines jet in January, point to production and maintenance issues, say experts, who don’t see an obvious pattern behind the myriad incidents.

Rash of incidents

The US plane maker has been under scrutiny since January 5, when a Boeing 737 MAX 9 operated by Alaska Airlines made an emergency landing after a fuselage panel blew out, somehow avoiding serious injuries in an incident that safety officials say could have been catastrophic.

United Airlines has experienced recent issues on various flights involving Boeing planes, as has Southwest Airlines, which in early April had an engine fire on one flight.

On Thursday, a Boeing 737-300 skidded off a runway in Senegal, resulting in 11 injuries, including four that were serious.

That followed a Wednesday incident in Istanbul in which a Boeing 767 cargo plane belonging to FedEx landed on its nose after its front landing gear failed to deploy.

Such a confluence of incidents is “pretty rare” within air travel, said aviation expert Bertrand Vilmer, who described the myriad “abnormal” problems as reflecting “an alignment of unfavorable planets.”

Alternative causes

Aviation experts usually look to three possible explanations for problems.

There can be a design defect, as with the two fatal crashes on 737 MAX jets in 2018 in Indonesia and 2019 in Ethiopia that involved a flaw in a flight stabilizing system.

Aviation watchers have pointed to a production defect as the likely source of the Alaska Airlines incident, which entailed a Boeing 737 MAX 9 that had only been delivered in October.

A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board published in February found that four bolts meant to help secure the panel that blew off were missing.

A third possible cause would be insufficient maintenance.

While design and production are the responsibility of the plane maker, the airline is in charge of keeping up the plane once it receives it.

“Once the aircraft is delivered, Boeing has nothing to do with it anymore” in relation to maintenance, said Richard Aboulafia of AeroDynamic Advisory.

Safest form of transport?

Notwithstanding the recent spate of incidents, aviation experts point to a strong safety record overall.

“We haven’t had a single casualty in the entire US airline industry in way over a decade, despite millions of people flown,” said Aboulafia. “That’s incredible.”

Aboulafia calls modern flying “the safest form of transport ever created by people,” noting that “everyday, hundreds of people get killed on the roads.”

Boeing’s rival, Airbus, has not been completely spared of difficulty. Hundreds of planes produced by the European company are being taken out of service to check for microscopic “contamination” of metals in engines made by Pratt & Whitney.

Airbus also had a public dispute with Qatar Airways involving the degradation of exterior plane surfaces.

But there have been fewer such issues at Airbus and not one incident that drew a comparable level of attention as Alaska Airlines, experts said.

“Every incident that has occurred on Boeing airplanes this year has made headlines, suggesting that Boeing airplanes are unsafe,” said a note from equity research firm Bernstein.

“The reality is that the number of incidents in the US on Airbus and Boeing airplanes so far this year is proportional to the number of airplanes in the fleets of US carriers.”

The US commercial fleet currently has about 4,800 planes, with about 60 percent Boeing planes, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics firm.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)