SHEFFIELD — It’s a crime that killed 346 people, yet no one is going to prison — and the public is still at risk.
That’s the message from Nadia Milleron of Sheffield, whose daughter Samya Stumo died in 2019 in the second of two Boeing 737 Max crashes.
Milleron has joined some of the other crash victims’ families to express outrage at Boeing’s plea deal announced on Monday, which she says won’t protect the public from planes that were rushed through production for speed and profit — and remain in use.
The families plan to ask the federal judge in the case to reject the plea deal — one that she says does not consider the deaths of our loved ones or deter the plane-maker from further malfeasance.
Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to charges of criminal fraud conspiracy and pay a $243.6 million fine to resolve the prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice.
That deal would also require the company to spend at least $455 million in the next three years for safety programs.
The DOJ said that Boeing lied to the Federal Aviation Administration about problems with software that would automatically make a correction by pushing down the nose of the plane. While the software saved the company money, it was linked to the two Max crashes — the first in Indonesia in 2018, and the second in Ethiopia five months later.
It was the Alaska Airlines panel blowout during a flight in January that violated the DOJ’s deferred prosecution agreement and removed its shield from criminal liability from those two crashes. A separate federal investigation is still underway for the blowout incident.
Milleron, who also is running as an independent for the U.S. congressional seat held for decades by U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield, says the families now have a chance to force Boeing to protect the public by bringing the company to trial and forcing accountability through sentencing.
Otherwise, she says, another crash is just a matter of time. She pointed to ongoing problems with the Max jets reported by pilots due to what she says are apparent production defects.
By fighting the plea deal, Milleron said, the families can extract more protection for the public. They also want to see a court-appointed, independent monitor of Boeing rather than one picked by the DOJ.
While she would like to see Boeing executives prosecuted, Milleron said they are shielded because the DOJ is applying the five-year statute of limitations starting from the March 10, 2019, date of the crash to March 10 of this year.
And the $243.6 million fine is a pittance to the company, Milleron added, noting that it wasn’t levied for the 346 deaths but for the fraud charge alone. The DOJ, she noted, said this was the maximum fine.
Divided by the number of deaths, the fine comes to $704,000 per victim.
Milleron, whose experience seeking justice for crash victims led her to run for office, criticized the current federal administration and its agencies, and politicians who take campaign money from Boeing, saying, They go after the wrong people and they are not protecting the public.