A deal to allow Boeing to avoid criminal prosecution for a pair of fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes was labeled as "morally repugnant" by a lawyer representing 16 families of victims killed in the incidents.

Speaking to BBC News, attorney Sanjiv Singh asserted that the deal allows the planemaker to "sidestep true criminal accountability." As part of the agreement, Boeing will pay $1.1 billion, with $444.5 million going toward the families of victims, and the remaining $455 million to improvements for regulatory compliance and safety. If the deal gets final approval from a federal judge, the Department of Justice will agree to the drop the criminal fraud case against Boeing, which had previously been scheduled to go to trial in June.

Boeing previously dodged criminal prosecution for the two crashes in 2021, when it reached a $2.5 billion settlement with the DOJ, and vowed to make sweeping changes to its safety standards. In May 2024, the DOJ ruled that Boeing had violated the terms of that deal after an investigation into a January 2024 door plug blowout aboard a 737 Max revealed a pervasive culture of rushed work and "troubling production problems."

The DOJ then offered Boeing a deal to settle the new fraud charges in June 2024, under the terms of which the company would have pled guilty to fraud and paid $487.2 million. A federal judge rejected that deal in March 2025, citing concerns over how diversity, equity and inclusion policies would factor into the process to pick a federal monitor. In May 2025, the DOJ announced that it was considering another deal with Boeing, this time without requiring the company to plead guilty. At the time, a lawyer for the families said that dismissing the case would "dishonor the memories" of the crash victims. Boeing agreed to the DOJ's updated terms in late May, stating that it was "deeply sorry" for the families' losses and that it planned to honor the victims with broad changes to its safety standards.