(NewsNation) — Boeing’s plea deal allowing the company to avoid a criminal trial over two deadly crashes is “guaranteed to fail” and will only worsen aviation safety, according to a former Boeing manager.
Ed Pierson, now the executive director of the nonprofit Foundation for Aviation Safety, said on NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” that the Department of Justice’s approach to Boeing’s case has been “laughable” and “shameful” to witness.
“I personally was in the factory. I saw what was going on,” Pierson said. “And I saw individuals making very poor decisions. These are leaders and different levels, making conscious decisions. And that’s what we need the DOJ to look at.”
The plea agreement — which still needs to be approved by a federal judge — punctuates years of scandal, tragedy and embarrassing safety lapses for the company
The DOJ struck the agreement after it found the aerospace company had violated a previous immunity agreement. Prosecutors found that Boeing misled FAA regulators prior to two fatal 737 Max crashes, one in Indonesia in 2018 and a second in Ethiopia in 2019, which resulted in the deaths of 346 passengers.
The plea deal outlines Boeing will:
- Pay $244 million criminal fine
- Spend $455 million over the next three years to improve its compliance and safety programs
- Hire an independent monitor for three years
While over half a billion dollars in fines might sound like a stiff penalty, crash victims’ families are outraged by the deal. Their lawyers even called it a “sweetheart deal” allowing “the deadly consequences of Boeing’s crime” to be hidden.
“You know this is like the cost of a plane or two, right?” Pierson said. “I mean, this is a company that made very conscious decisions, individuals that made very conscious decisions, that resulted in the deaths of all these people.”
According to Pierson, the steps outlined in the plea deal will be useless if higher-ups don’t change their ways.
“Obviously, the vast majority of those employees are trying to do their job properly. It’s a handful of individuals who are making these very conscious decisions and that are placing the public at risk. They’re the ones that are pressuring employees and subordinate managers,” he said.
Pierson also said Boeing’s repeated issues reflect poorly on the Federal Aviation Administration, saying that the agency is “failing miserably” as issues continue to arise.
It’s important to note that this agreement only applies to anything before the two crashes, so it does not stop further charges for other Boeing mishaps in the years since.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.