The Department of Justice may be ready to let Boeing (NYSE:BA) off the hookagain. According to several people involved in the case, the DOJ is considering a non-prosecution agreement that would spare Boeing (NYSE:BA) a criminal trial in exchange for $444.5 million. That money would be distributed to the families of the 346 people killed in two separate 737 Max crashes. It's not the first time Boeing's avoided the courtroomnor the second. This would mark the third time the aerospace giant dodges a full public reckoning, and the backlash is growing louder. A trial is still on the calendar for June 23. But if this deal goes through, it may never happen.

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From the outside, it looks like a win for Boeing. No conviction. No courtroom. No headlines about executives under oath. But for the families who lost loved ones, it feels like another slap in the face. People committed these crimesnot just a company, said Ike Riffel, who lost two sons in the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash. Lawyers say the non-prosecution deal would lack any judicial oversight. One called it the most lenient bargain yet. Boeing, meanwhile, is staying quiet. The company recently secured a $96 billion aircraft deal with Qatar and landed a major Pentagon contract. A criminal conviction could jeopardize bothso the stakes are massive.

But behind the scenes, grief is boiling into something else: a demand for truth. Victims' families want answerswho knew what, and when?and they say only a public trial can deliver that. Some have even proposed a counter-offer: a multi-billion dollar safety reform plan funded entirely by Boeing, including factory-floor monitors for the next five years. The door plug incident on an Alaska Airlines Max 9 in early 2024 only reinforced their pointsystemic issues aren't fixed yet. Boeing may be too big to fail, said one family member. But they're also too big to keep building unsafe planes.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.

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