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posted by martyb on Thursday July 04 2019, @10:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the down-payment dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 05 2019, @01:50AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 05 2019, @01:50AM (#863315)

    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

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 05 2019, @01:56AM (#863317)

    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

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 05 2019, @05:24PM (#863550)

    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.