Boeing to pay 737 MAX crash victims' families $144,500 each

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

WORLD NEWS SEPTEMBER 23, 2019 / 2:50 PM / UPDATED 2 HOURS AGO

Boeing to pay 737 MAX crash victims' families $144,500 each

David Shepardson
3 MIN READ

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co (BA.N) will pay the families of 346 people killed in two fatal 737 MAX crashes $144,500 each from a $50 million financial assistance fund announced in July, the fund’s administrators said on Monday.

The fund, overseen by Washington lawyers Ken Feinberg and Camille S. Biros, will begin accepting claims from family members immediately. Family members will not be required to waive or release the right to litigate as a condition of participation. The 737 MAX has been grounded since March after fatal crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia.

Claims must be postmarked no later than Dec. 31, the fund said.

Feinberg said Monday in an email to Reuters that “finding all of these heirs and making sure the funds will be safe and secure will be a real challenge since the families can be found in 35 foreign countries.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-airplane-victims/boeing-to-pay-737-max-crash-victims-families-144500-each-idUSKBN1W8288

[JDC]

1. That feels light to me.

They knew they had issues, and crashed not once, but twice.

[ret5hd]

3. The way I read it is...

accepting this does not limit anyone from suing for more. Kinda “no strings get on your feet we are good guys” money.

[abqtommy]

2. I think the 144,500 bucks is way too cheap to compensate for a human life!

I think that Boeing should be bankrupted!

[ret5hd]

4. Like "out of business" bankrupt?

150,000 employees on the street.

[abqtommy]

5. Yup. And never mention the name Boeing again.

The Boeing leadership and policies have resulted in mass murder. Nobody's so essential that they can't be prosecuted. Retrain people to work in the solar panel/wind power field. I'll show the Boeing employees the same level of compassion that was shown to the dead passengers! seething rant off

[ret5hd]

7. Yeeeaaaah, you be da true badass alright.

(You should stop trying so hard.)

[USALiberal]

8. Oh FFS planes have crashed since the wright brothers! calm down! nt

[ret5hd]

9. Oh, let the guy build a bit of cred.

We will soon be standing in awe. You just watch.

[USALiberal]

10. LOL nt

[customerserviceguy]

6. How about

the foreign airlines who didn't have their pilots trained properly? Do they kick some in to the victims' families?

[Eugene]

11. In the case of the 737 MAX, Boeing told airlines and pilots that MAX was

just a more fuel-efficient version of the 737. A key selling point was that the MAX did not require expensive pilot retraining. Boeing didn't tell them about the new plane's tendency to stall or about the new MCAS anti-stall system. They didn't tell pilots that autopilot behavior and emergency procedures were changed from the 737 Neo. Boeing didn't tell the airlines that the plane's new technology had a single point of failure if they didn't buy the optional "disagree light."

The MAX is a new beast, and testers of the new fixes say that all MAX pilots will need retraining. The crashes weren't pilot error. The pilots were working against automation they didn't know was there.

Boeing made the business decision to tweak the 737 design to the point of making it unstable rather than making a new plane from scratch. Then they added a series of kludges to make it better. Now we have a former Boeing official taking the 5th.