SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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 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.