Judge orders a June trial for US government’s felony case against Boeing

A federal judge in Texas has set a June trial date for the U.S. government’s years-old conspiracy case against Boeing for misleading regulators about the 737 Max jetliner before two of the planes crashed, killing 346 people. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor did not explain in the scheduling order he issued on Tuesday why he decided to set the case for trial. Lawyers for the aerospace company and the Justice Department have spent months trying to renegotiate a July 2024 plea agreement that called for Boeing to plead guilty to a single felony charge. The judge rejected that deal in December, saying that diversity, inclusion and equity policies the Justice Department had in place at the time might influence the selection of a monitor to oversee the company’s compliance with the terms of its proposed sentence. Since then, O’Connor had three times extended the deadline for the two sides to report how they planned to proceed. His most recent extension, granted earlier this month, gave them until April 11 to “confer on a potential resolution of this case short of trial.” The judge revoked the remaining time with his Tuesday order, which laid out a timeline for proceedings leading up to a June 23 trial in Fort Worth. The Department of Justice declined to comment on the judge’s action. A Boeing statement shed no light on the status of the negotiations. “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,” the company said. The deal the judge refused to approve would have averted a criminal trial by allowing Boeing to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud Federal Aviation Administration regulators who approved minimal pilot-training requirements for the 737 Max nearly a decade ago. More intensive training in flight simulators would have increased the cost for airlines to operate the then-new plane model.<br/>