A United States 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 didn’t properly seek the advice of them before reaching a deal last yr with Boeing that led a lower court to dismiss a criminal conspiracy charge against the corporate. The charge stemmed from allegations that Boeing misled federal regulators a few flight-control system linked to the crashes, which killed 346 people.
In a unanimous decision released Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the fifth 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 due to this fact couldn’t revive the case.
Paul Cassell, a lawyer for the families, called the ruling “badly flawed.”
“Today’s ruling implies that Boeing escapes criminal justice accountability for killing 346 people,” Cassell said Tuesday in an announcement. “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 Latest Orleans before the appellate court, company attorney Paul Clement said greater than 60 other families “affirmatively supported” the deal and dozens more didn’t oppose it.
“Boeing deeply regrets” the tragic crashes, Clement had said, and “has taken extraordinary steps to enhance 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 extra $1.1 billion in fines, compensation to victims’ families, and internal safety and quality measures.
At the identical hearing, federal prosecutors told the judges that the federal government has, for years, “solicited and weighed the views of the crash victims’ families because it’s decided whether and the best way to prosecute the Boeing Company.”
All passengers and crew died when the 737 Max jets crashed lower than five months apart in 2018 and 2019 — a Lion Air flight that plunged into the ocean off the coast of Indonesia and an Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed right into a field shortly after takeoff. Eighteen Canadians were aboard the Ethiopian Airlines flight.
Get each day National news
Get each day Canada news delivered to your inbox so you will never miss the day’s top stories.
The criminal case had taken many twists and turns. The Justice Department first charged Boeing in 2021 with defrauding the federal government but agreed to not prosecute if the corporate 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 corporate 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 2 sides to resume negotiations.
The Justice Department returned last May with the brand 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 chance that a jury might acquit Boeing entirely, leaving the corporate 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 just because he disagreed with the federal government’s view that the brand new cope with Boeing served the general 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.
However the Max did include significant changes, a few of which Boeing downplayed — most notably, the addition of an automatic flight-control system designed to assist account for the plane’s larger engines. Boeing didn’t mention the system in airplane manuals, and most pilots didn’t learn about it.
In each 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 didn’t inform key Federal Aviation Administration personnel about changes it had made to the software before regulators set pilot training requirements for the Max and licensed the airliner for flight.
“One can only hope that one other Boeing crash won’t be the consequence of this badly flawed ruling,” Cassell, the lawyer for the families, said Tuesday.
© 2026 The Canadian Press