Chief Judge Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Nov. 6 dismissed a federal criminal case against The Boeing Company for crashes of its 737 MAX 8 model of commercial aircraft.
The prosecution stemmed from two air incidents—Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302, which went down on March 10, 2019, and Lion Air Flight 610, which crashed on Oct. 29, 2018—which killed 346 passengers and crew.
The cause of those crashes, as acknowledged by Boeing, was an error in its automated flight control system that pushed the aircraft’s nose down during takeoff—errors that Boeing concealed from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) during the aircraft’s pre-certification inspections….