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Boeing pledges $100M to families of 737 Max crash victims – TechCrunch
Boeing has said it will offer $100 million to the families and communities of those who died aboard the two 737 Max passenger jets that crashed earlier this year. This “initial outreach” will likely only be a small part of the company’s penance for the mistakes that led to the deaths of 346 people.
In a statement, the company said it expected the money to “address family and community needs,” and “support education, hardship and living expenses.”
[...] CEO and president Dennis Muilenburg... earlier this year accepted the blame, acknowledging that “it is apparent that in both flights, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, known as MCAS, activated in response to erroneous angle of attack information.”
[...] This initial payout is voluntary; it is highly unusual for an airplane maker to pay such a sum to the victims of a crash ahead of any lawsuits. Boeing, Airbus and other companies involved in passenger flight have certainly in the past paid damages, directly or via insurance or some other means, but that was generally after a lawsuit forced them to. Sometimes a company will approach families with ready money to prevent them from filing a lawsuit, but that’s not often publicized.
And lawsuits are certainly underway already, with dozens of families bringing suits for each crash. The amounts these could bring are very difficult to predict, but given the loss of life and that the flaws that led to it can be traced directly to mistakes by Boeing, the company could be on the hook for hundreds of millions more.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday July 04 2019, @10:47PM (11 children)
The lawyers take that, multiply by 10, then start to negotiate.
/ Boeing is so fucked here
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 04 2019, @10:53PM (7 children)
That's only $67,842.61 per passenger (100e6/(737*2)).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 04 2019, @11:35PM (6 children)
Your math skills are almost as bad as Boeing's software skills. 737 is the model of plane, not the number of passengers who died in each crash.
100,000,000 / 346 = 289,017.34 per passenger.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 05 2019, @01:05AM
That's a lot of money for the family of a goatfucker in Jihadistan.
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Friday July 05 2019, @01:19AM (3 children)
289,017.34 per passenger killed due to what appears to be negligence and skimping to save costs is going to be a light entree. I would be very surprised if even adding a zero to the end of that figure would be considered enough by the court system. It will be interesting to watch this case to see how much "suspect" dealings there were. From what I heard so far, Boeing was able to self-certify and a bunch of other significant cost savings things that didn't appear to follow the general rules of how to properly design and then build a plane.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 05 2019, @01:50AM (2 children)
Standards for the value of a human life, for example from various parts of the UN, always take into account the potential earnings and expected lifespan and similar things.
Somalians have an expected lifetime of 56 years. Somalia has a per-person GDP of about $500 per year, give or take 5%.
For a newborn that comes to about $28,000. Most will be older. Boeing has made an offer that is 10x to 15x what the international standards would say is appropriate.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 05 2019, @01:56AM
I wouldn't pay $28k for a Somali unless the contract let me return it if it turned out to be Moslem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 05 2019, @05:24PM
I know you're trolling, but I don't think there are a lot of average Somalians on those planes. Airfare alone would about a year's worth of earnings. That's a lot of money when you can barely afford to feed yourself. The average Somalian doesn't fly a lot, and if they do it's probably on something like an old 727, not Boeing's latest models.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday July 05 2019, @12:14PM
Better described as Indian software skills.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/boeing-s-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9-an-hour-engineers [bloomberg.com]
Not that other companies are better - they just did not kill people - not yet anyways.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 04 2019, @11:18PM
And a chance to throw a Boeing executive of each aggrieved party's choice out of a C-130 without a parachute (Or a 707 with the rear staircase...)
Then we might be talking acceptable compensation.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 04 2019, @11:32PM (1 child)
Snotnose is an asshole.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday July 05 2019, @02:26AM
True dat.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday July 04 2019, @11:17PM (2 children)
a percentage of the families will take the fast money and sign away their chances at getting a whole lot more. And the settlement agreement include a non disclosure limits baring the parties from interviews, discussions, or other distribution of information related to the incident. So no one can talk to the people making the eventual documentary about how Boeing messed up, no book deals, nothing more that can effect Boeing's reputation or bottom line.
The ones who don't accept will then get stalled and otherwise delayed in the court systems and likely will not see an actual payout for decades, if ever.
So instead of being on the hook for hundreds of millions or more down the road this is just a line item on this years spreadsheet and most of the future liability is now removed.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday July 05 2019, @12:19PM (1 child)
I wonder, what if folks take money and then violate the agreement by trashing the company. Sure, it's perhaps illegal, but would the Boeing able to go after them?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 05 2019, @02:43PM
If the payment is broken into 20 annual instalments, yes.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by dltaylor on Thursday July 04 2019, @11:41PM (1 child)
346*3 years consecutive sentences for the board, officers, and project management sounds about right to me.
(Score: 4, Informative) by SpockLogic on Friday July 05 2019, @12:55AM
$100M is just the cost of doing business for the MBA's.
Let me know when they start putting the fuckers in jail. Then, and only then, will justice be done.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Friday July 05 2019, @12:30AM
What? Like they won't make it back in 3 months of weapons sales to the Saudis?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday July 05 2019, @01:17AM (1 child)
How much additional would it have cost to write, thoroughly test, and correctly deploy the software the first time? Or even now, for that matter?
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Friday July 05 2019, @01:56PM
It probably would have cost far more if they had done more testing and had to adhere to higher standards than a $100m payout, if that's what you are getting at.
The reason for the abbreviated testing in the first place was to get to market sooner to compete with Airbus more effectively.
They managed to reason their way into a lower testing standard they could pass faster. It meant sales they wouldn't have made otherwise.
The unit price per plane is around $100m-$130m, so selling just one more plane would have covered this cost.
Of course, they've had a lot of losses besides just this a result of the incident. They ended up having to process some returns and do some hijinks to get more sales again. The planes are still banned from being operated in some places and they've lost some clients. The payout to the victims' families is only a portion of the total cost to them as a company.
(Score: 2) by Revek on Friday July 05 2019, @02:49AM
The press release announced boeing delivered.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 2) by SemperOSS on Friday July 05 2019, @07:50AM
As the crash victims cannot be brought back to life, $100 million sounds about right ... for each victim, of course!
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 05 2019, @12:56PM (1 child)
A major airplane provider needs to have their act together.
That includes engineering and production.
This all flows from the culture set by management.
Which in turn works for Wall Street.
It takes a long time to change a good company's culture, but above chain appears to have managed to do this for the worse.
Boeing is not alone is this. Much of our critical infrastructure companies no longer focus on their customers, but rather anything for a buck.
Tractors, computers, and pharma come to mind, but there are many more examples.
Hanging a few evil MBA's in the middle of this mess seems a quick solution.
But the expectations of the investment community seems the root of the problem.
How does one fix this?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 05 2019, @03:03PM
You're not going to get rid of the price on human lives. There will always be MBAs and C*Os calculating whether it is cheaper to do it right or to kill people and pay the penalties.
The only thing you can do is make the penalty so high that it is never the rational choice. Corporate death penalty. All assets seized and sold off at public auction. Everybody above lower-middle-management has their contracts terminated immediately for malfeasance, with no benefits. What money you get from selling the assets goes to the victims.
If you can ever prove that they knew people would die, then murder charges for individuals.