Boeing has agreed to pay US$2.5 billion to settle criminal charges that it hid information from the FAA and airline customers about the MCAS in its 737 Max. About US$500m of this will go to families of the 346 people killed in the tragedies.
This US$500m is an indication of how much African life is worth. Notable is this it is half the estimate from Bloomberg that it would cost Boeing at least US$1 billion to settle claims from families of Lion Air Flight JT610 and Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 victims.
Bloomberg’s estimate of US$1 billion comes to US$3m per passenger. This seems to be a realistic upside amount. The first of the 32 Kenyan families of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302 crash victims have indeed now received a US$3m each settlement from Boeing.
This is a long way from Boeing’s opening bid in July 2019, when it announced $100 million in funds for the families and communities of the crash victims. This may have been an interim amount for supporting education, community programmes and living expenses for affected families, pending the finalisation of claims. Boeing said it would partner with local governments and non-profit organizations to address these needs, and that the US$100m would be distributed over multiple years.
It is notable that a large part of this latest US$2.5 billion award by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is punitive because Boeing ‘chose “profit over candour”, impeding oversight of the planes, which were involved in two deadly crashes. The tragic crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 exposed fraudulent and deceptive conduct by employees of one of the world’s leading commercial airplane manufacturers,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General David Burns. Boeing did not co-operate with investigators for six months, the DOJ said.
Investigators look for evidence. There was not much left to recover after the Ethiopian crash. 
Rescuers use a crane to retrieve part of the landing gear of the crashed Lion Air jet from the sea floor in the waters of Tanjung Karawang, Indonesia, Sunday, Nov. 4, 2018. Investigators succeeded in retrieving hours of data from the aircraft’s flight recorder as Indonesian authorities on Sunday extended the search at sea for victims and debris. (AP Photo/Fauzy Chaniago)
Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Boeing was charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the US, which will be dismissed after three years if the planemaker continues to comply with the deal.
Of the US$2.5 billion, the bulk, being $1.77 billion, will go as compensation to the airlines who were affected by the grounding of their Max fleets.
Boeing also agreed to pay a penalty of $243.6m. According to the DOJ, “Under the terms of the DPA, Boeing will pay a total criminal monetary amount of over $2.5 billion, composed of a criminal monetary penalty of $243.6 million, compensation payments to Boeing’s 737 MAX airline customers of $1.77 billion, and the establishment of a $500 million crash-victim beneficiaries fund to compensate the heirs, relatives, and legal beneficiaries …”
But attorneys for the victims of the Ethiopian Airlines crash said the deal would not end their pending civil lawsuit against Boeing.
It will be interesting to see what amounts the victims finally receive – and if a one size fits all approach will be adopted whereby every family receives the same or whether some sort of seniority system will be applied, the quantification of which will keep teams of lawyers busy for years.
