A federal judge overseeing plea deal negotiations between the Justice Department and Boeing (BA) has scrapped an order giving the parties more time to reach an agreement and instead ordered the giant jet maker to face a jury trial.
The surprise development upends a long-running legal saga that Boeing hoped to end as it tries to show progress on several fronts more than one year after a door plug blew off a Boeing-made Alaska Airlines (ALK) 737 Max 9 jet.
The order from US District Judge Reed O’Connor came one day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing wanted President Trump’s Justice Department officials to let it out of a guilty criminal plea agreement the jet maker reached with the Biden administration.
In that 2024 agreement, Boeing admitted that its workers conspired to defraud aviation regulators before two fatal 737 Max 8 crashes killed 346 people in the past decade. O’Connor rejected the deal late last year in part because of its terms governing the selection and conditions for a corporate monitor tasked with protecting against future fraud.
Boeing and the DOJ had been negotiating changes to that deal before an April 11 deadline set by the judge. But on Tuesday, O’Connor ripped up that deadline in favor of a trial later this year in Fort Worth, Texas.
“The Court hereby VACATES its April 11, 2025, deadline in its previous order and instead sets this case for trial on Monday, June 23, 2025,” he wrote.
Boeing said, “[As] stated in the parties’ recent filings, Boeing and the Department of Justice continue to be engaged in good faith discussions regarding an appropriate resolution of this matter.”
Paul Cassell, an attorney for some of the plaintiffs’ families, said, “We are pleased with today’s order. The families have waited more than four years for justice in this case. In light of today’s order, the families won’t have to wait any longer than June 23.”
Admitting guilt was meant to insulate Boeing from facing a criminal trial on the government’s allegation that the jet maker misled Federal Aviation Administration officials before the 737 Max 8 crashes at the end of the last decade.
Those allegations initially produced a deferred prosecution agreement reached in 2021, but last year the DOJ notified Boeing that it had breached the agreement after a door plug blew off a Boeing-made 737 Max 9 flown by Alaska Airlines.
Avoiding a criminal conviction would be a major victory for the company. Such convictions can foreclose or suspend a company’s right to contract with the federal government and frustrate its ability to secure loans, according to Eddie Jauregui, a white-collar defense attorney with Holland & Knight and former federal prosecutor.
