Boeing after the 737 MAX crashes: not just the planes, but the criminal case

The MAX story is usually remembered as a design and safety scandal. The criminal follow-up is less widely understood. Boeing had reached a deal to plead guilty to fraud conspiracy, but that agreement hit resistance in court, was reworked, and then effectively fell apart. By March 2025, a judge had even set a June trial date while Boeing and the DOJ kept negotiating. Then the government reversed course and sought dismissal. In March 2026, a federal appeals court upheld the lower court's decision to let the DOJ dismiss the case, despite objections from some victims' families.

That did not end every legal thread. Civil cases tied to the crashes continued. AP reported in May 2026 that a federal jury awarded damages to the family of a passenger killed in the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash. The distinction matters: the criminal fraud case over the MAX crashes was dismissed, but Boeing's civil exposure and safety scrutiny did not simply disappear.

So one of the most consequential corporate scandals of the era ended without the criminal trial many people expected, while related civil accountability continued on a separate track.