Justice Department’s Criminal Division has gathered information about the plane through a grand jury. The company said it may be subject to unspecified penalties in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month, but said it didn’t anticipate a significant impact on its bottom line.Ĭrashes involving the 737 Max - there was a second one in Ethiopia last March, in which the alert also didn’t work - killed 346, grounded the plane worldwide and will cost the company an estimated $18.6 billion. The FAA said in an emailed statement it doesn’t comment on potential enforcement actions.īoeing spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the company wouldn’t comment on any possible open investigations. Boeing had compiled at least some of the messages early last year, but didn’t disclose them to FAA until last fall and in January. “I don’t know how this came about, but it’s worrisome to me,' Murdock said.īoeing’s decision to withhold two troves of caustic and sarcastic text messages and emails between its employees from the FAA runs contrary to agency policy encouraging self-disclosure. Murdock, who served as FAA’s chief counsel and acting deputy administrator in the 1980s, said he’d never seen anything like what he called Boeing’s recent “disregard' for norms during his four decades of working in the aviation sector.

Boeing paid $12 million in that case, but could be assessed an additional $24 million if FAA finds the violations continued.Īt the very least, the failure to disclose the inoperative warning light combined with other recent disclosures by the company - such as messages between employees mocking the FAA - have significantly soured the relationship between the Chicago-based manufacturer and its regulator. Moreover, a 2015 agreement to settle 13 separate investigations against Boeing - some of them involving similar issues of aircraft certification - gives the FAA a way to take swift action against the company.

That could be applied to each of the more than 300 planes on which the alert didn’t work. The agency’s enforcement guidelines say large businesses such as Boeing can be assessed $3,000 to more than $34,000 per violation.

“A manufacturer cannot alter the airplane’s features after it has been certified,' the then-acting head of the FAA, Daniel Elwell, said in a letter to lawmakers last July, referring to the malfunctioning alert.

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