FBI: Airliner's Loss of Panel May Have Been a Crime

Boeing skirted criminal liability by reaching a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department three years ago on charges that it had defrauded regulators during the certification process for 737 Max jets. The period much like a probation hasn't quite expired yet, and that could become a problem for the manufacturer. The FBI has now sent a letter to passengers on the Alaska Airlines flight that lost a door panel in January, CNN reports, advising them that they might have been victims "of a crime." The letter says the agency is investigating but does not say what the crime would have been.

But government officials said the subject of the criminal investigation is whether Boeing has violated the terms of the deal, per the AP. Reached in the last month of Donald Trump's administration, the agreement upset members of Congress and relatives of crash victims at the time. Boeing paid $2.5 billion, but it already had committed to most of that going to airlines in connection with earlier crashes. A lawyer for some of the Alaska Airlines passengers said they welcome the new investigation. "We want answers," said Mark Lindquist. "We want safer Boeing planes." (More Boeing stories.)