Latest news with #737Max8
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ryanair to raise air fares after lower ticket prices hit profits
Ryanair has said air fares will head back up this summer after a year of lower fares saw the budget airline's profits fall 16%. Europe's biggest airline carried just over 200 million passengers in 2024-25 with ticket prices down 7% to fill its planes, after a dispute halted bookings from some online agents, reducing full-year profits to €1.6bn (£1.4bn). However, it expects fares to rise by about 5%-6% in 2025's peak season, and Easter already brought a leap of 15% in the first quarter. Related: Ryanair's £79 membership scheme takes off – but Which? says 'think twice' Michael O'Leary, the airline's chief executive, said full-year results were 'very good in the context of last year, where we had the row with the OTAs [online travel agents] and fares fell 7% – it's a remarkably robust set of numbers'. He said that the airline had made about €8 per passenger, with costs growing exactly in line with passenger numbers, claiming: 'The cost gap between us and all of our competitors is getting wider.' Ryanair is paying out about €400m in dividends this year. O'Leary said profits would rise and be buoyed up by lower jet fuel prices. O'Leary said the airline group could divert upcoming Boeing deliveries to the UK rather than its main European airline to avoid tariffs, if necessary. Ryanair is its biggest customer in Europe but deliveries of the 737 Max 8 model have been delayed, after fraught years of problems at the US plane manufacturer. He said of Boeing's 'situation on the ground has significantly improved', but Ryanair awaits 29 more aircraft for next summer's schedule which could be delivered this autumn and 'that could run the risk of running into tariffs again'. O'Leary said that he believed Donald Trump was 'trying to walk his way back from the tariffs as best he can' with Europe, but added: 'We have fixed-price contracts with Boeing – tariffs will be an issue for Boeing's account, not for ours, but we will work with Boeing to try to find ways around them. 'The trade deal between the US and the UK looks like it won't apply tariffs on commercial aircraft – we have the option with Boeing of taking those deliveries on to a UK register, rather than a European register, bypassing any tariff risk.' He said the delays had left Ryanair 'a little bit cash rich at the moment' and 'surplus cash will return to shareholders', and a €750m share buy-back would start next week. Keir Starmer's reset with Europe would be positive for Ryanair, O'Leary said, especially regarding passport e-gates and a possible youth mobility scheme: 'Anything that reduces friction between the UK and Europe, we will be all in favour of – particularly some of the really stupid stuff, like passengers arriving in Europe going through the non European channels.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's DOJ agrees to let Boeing escape guilty plea. It was a deal victims' families didn't want.
President Trump's Justice Department has agreed to let Boeing (BA) out of a criminal trial and guilty plea surrounding two fatal 737 Max 8 crashes. It was a result that some family members of the crash victims didn't want. The DOJ said in a court filing Friday that it had struck an agreement in principle for Boeing to avoid prosecution, meaning it won't have to go to trial next month and can avoid being branded a corporate felon. Boeing had previously reached a criminal guilty plea deal in 2024 with President Biden's DOJ, admitting that its workers conspired to defraud aviation regulators before the crashes killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019. This new "non-prosecution" agreement would end the criminal fraud charges renewed after prosecutors revoked a prior deferred prosecution agreement they reached with Boeing in January 2021. In a court filing on Friday the DOJ said 'it is the Government's judgment that the Agreement is a fair and just resolution that serves the public interest.' 'The Agreement guarantees further accountability and substantial benefits from Boeing immediately, while avoiding the uncertainty and litigation risk presented by proceeding to trial.' Boeing has agreed to pay an additional $444.5 million into a crash victims' fund on top of an additional $243.6 million fine. But some some family members of the crash victims said before this deal was announced that they were not in favor of it, saying they viewed it as a sweetheart deal for the aviation giant at the expense of justice and safety. 'The message that is sent to corporate America is: Don't worry about killing your customers,' said Dr. Javier de Luis, a retired aerospace engineer and MIT lecturer whose sister, Graziella de Luis y Ponce, an interpreter, died in one of the crashes. 'Just treat it as a cost of doing business.' The idea of letting Boeing out of its guilty plea was floated last week with some of these family members in a call with DOJ officials.. The government said in an update on the case published May 19 that Boeing would also be required to pay the maximum fine allowed by law, pay for compliance improvements, and retain an independent compliance consultant. Avoiding a criminal conviction would be a major victory for the company and would re-insulate Boeing from a criminal fraud trial for a third time, most recently after a federal judge ordered a trial to begin in June. Criminal convictions can foreclose or suspend a company's right to contract with the federal government and frustrate its ability to secure loans. Those consequences have particular meaning for Boeing, which counts the federal government as its largest customer and also happens to be the country's largest exporter. Earlier this year, Boeing won a major contract to build a new F-47 jet fighter for the Pentagon. Last week, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg accompanied Trump on a trip to the Middle East and thanked the president for helping to broker a $96 billion order from Qatar Airways. Sitting next to the president at an event, he said, "All of these aircraft will be built in the United States, creating a significant number of jobs." Tracy Brammeier, a crash victims' lawyer from Clifford Law Offices, said before Friday's announcement that plan being considered by the DOJ was the most lenient bargain yet and would reward Boeing with less accountability for its repeated breaches. She added that a trial, on the other hand, could expose who at the company is responsible for the deaths of her clients. 'When it comes to a non-prosecution agreement, there is no judicial oversight. It's truly a private agreement,' Brammeier said. 'With a deferred prosecution agreement, it's truly deferred, so there's a time period where Boeing still has to answer to a judge.' 'You had a criminal who said, 'I want to plead guilty to a crime.' And now all of the sudden, six or seven months later, the government is saying we just decided that they can pay [millions] and we're going to drop the case,' Brammeier added. Court approval is required for the DOJ to dismiss the charges. However, because judges have limited discretion to overstep the government's prosecutorial discretion, it's rare for such a request to be denied. Another family member of victims who was not happy with what the DOJ was considering was Ike Riffel, who lost two sons, Melvin, 29, and Bennett, 26, in Ethiopian Airlines' Boeing 737 Max crash of 2019. The government's latest proposal, he said, leaves no path for families to uncover who specifically at Boeing knew about the 737 Max's deficiencies. 'We've lost any other options that we have,' Riffel said, adding that the government's prosecution of Boeing's test pilot on multiple counts of fraud ended in acquittal. 'What I'd like to see is a public trial. Who did what? Who said what? Which executives were in on this whole conspiracy?' 'I want Boeing to get back to the gold standard of engineering and safety," Riffel said. "There are a lot of great people we know that work for Boeing that knew nothing about it. No one wants to see Boeing fail. We just want to get the rats out of the cellar." That's reason enough for the judge to reject the deal, he added. 'Hopefully, he'll see through this — that they're dangling money in our face.' Matthew Yelovich, a former federal prosecutor who is now a partner in Cleary Gottlieb's white collar criminal practice, agreed that a trial generally brings more to light. "One of the great hallmarks of our system of public trials is the participation of the public in the criminal justice system,' Yelovich said. 'It's not just the right of the government to put on the full force of its evidence, but also for the public to have visibility into the charges, the evidence, and the defenses that might otherwise not be reflected in a resolution agreement.' Bremmeier said the families reason that their objection to another trial-evading agreement will enhance flight safety. Boeing is still recovering from another near-fatal aircraft failure in January 2024, when a door plug blew off a Boeing-made 737 Max 9 flown by Alaska Airlines. 'The door plug incident a year and a half ago is a really good example of that,' she said. Riffel said he pleaded with the government's lawyers during last week's call to reconsider. 'I ask that the DOJ tear this agreement up and reopen the investigation,' he said. 'People committed these crimes, not a corporation … If this non-prosecution agreement is accepted, the truth will never be known, and I believe that the truth is very important to help make sure that this never happens again.' 'The DOJ is giving Boeing another chance; my sons never had a chance.' De Luis said the victims proposed that Boeing make a much more significant monetary contribution in the "single-digit billions" of dollars. The funds, he said, would be used entirely to employ external safety monitors on Boeing's factory floors for five years. Monitors are needed, he said, because in his opinion, the FAA is not currently equipped to fully oversee manufacturing safety. 'People say Boeing is too big to fail. Yes, but it's also too big to produce unsafe airplanes," de Luis said. "We need them to do better. And they have proven time and time again that left to their own devices, they will not do better." Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed. Click here for in-depth analysis of the latest stock market news and events moving stock prices Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's DOJ agrees to let Boeing escape guilty plea. It was a deal victims' families didn't want.
President Trump's Justice Department has agreed to let Boeing (BA) out of a criminal trial and guilty plea surrounding two fatal 737 Max 8 crashes. It was a result that some family members of the crash victims didn't want. The DOJ said in a court filing Friday that it had struck an agreement in principle for Boeing to avoid prosecution, meaning it won't have to go to trial next month and can avoid being branded a corporate felon. Boeing had previously reached a criminal guilty plea deal in 2024 with President Biden's DOJ, admitting that its workers conspired to defraud aviation regulators before the crashes killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019. This new "non-prosecution" agreement would end the criminal fraud charges renewed after prosecutors revoked a prior deferred prosecution agreement they reached with Boeing in January 2021. In a court filing on Friday the DOJ said 'is the Government's judgment that the Agreement is a fair and just resolution that serves the public interest.' 'The Agreement guarantees further accountability and substantial benefits from Boeing immediately, while avoiding the uncertainty and litigation risk presented by proceeding to trial.' Boeing has agreed to pay an additional $444.5 million into a crash victims' fund on top of an additional $243.6 million fine. But some some family members of the crash victims said before this deal was announced that they were not in favor of it, saying they viewed it as a sweetheart deal for the aviation giant at the expense of justice and safety. 'The message that is sent to corporate America is: Don't worry about killing your customers,' said Dr. Javier de Luis, a retired aerospace engineer and MIT lecturer whose sister, Graziella de Luis y Ponce, an interpreter, died in one of the crashes. 'Just treat it as a cost of doing business.' The idea of letting Boeing out of its guilty plea was floated last week with some of these family members in a call with DOJ officials.. The government said in an update on the case published May 19 that Boeing would also be required to pay the maximum fine allowed by law, pay for compliance improvements, and retain an independent compliance consultant. Avoiding a criminal conviction would be a major victory for the company and would re-insulate Boeing from a criminal fraud trial for a third time, most recently after a federal judge ordered a trial to begin in June. Criminal convictions can foreclose or suspend a company's right to contract with the federal government and frustrate its ability to secure loans. Those consequences have particular meaning for Boeing, which counts the federal government as its largest customer and also happens to be the country's largest exporter. Earlier this year, Boeing won a major contract to build a new F-47 jet fighter for the Pentagon. Last week, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg accompanied Trump on a trip to the Middle East and thanked the president for helping to broker a $96 billion order from Qatar Airways. Sitting next to the president at an event, he said, "All of these aircraft will be built in the United States, creating a significant number of jobs." Tracy Brammeier, a crash victims' lawyer from Clifford Law Offices, said before Friday's announcement that plan being considered by the DOJ was the most lenient bargain yet and would reward Boeing with less accountability for its repeated breaches. She added that a trial, on the other hand, could expose who at the company is responsible for the deaths of her clients. 'When it comes to a non-prosecution agreement, there is no judicial oversight. It's truly a private agreement,' Brammeier said. 'With a deferred prosecution agreement, it's truly deferred, so there's a time period where Boeing still has to answer to a judge.' 'You had a criminal who said, 'I want to plead guilty to a crime.' And now all of the sudden, six or seven months later, the government is saying we just decided that they can pay [millions] and we're going to drop the case,' Brammeier added. Court approval is required for the DOJ to dismiss the charges. However, because judges have limited discretion to overstep the government's prosecutorial discretion, it's rare for such a request to be denied. Another family member of victims who was not happy with what the DOJ was considering was Ike Riffel, who lost two sons, Melvin, 29, and Bennett, 26, in Ethiopian Airlines' Boeing 737 Max crash of 2019. The government's latest proposal, he said, leaves no path for families to uncover who specifically at Boeing knew about the 737 Max's deficiencies. 'We've lost any other options that we have,' Riffel said, adding that the government's prosecution of Boeing's test pilot on multiple counts of fraud ended in acquittal. 'What I'd like to see is a public trial. Who did what? Who said what? Which executives were in on this whole conspiracy?' 'I want Boeing to get back to the gold standard of engineering and safety," Riffel said. "There are a lot of great people we know that work for Boeing that knew nothing about it. No one wants to see Boeing fail. We just want to get the rats out of the cellar." That's reason enough for the judge to reject the deal, he added. 'Hopefully, he'll see through this — that they're dangling money in our face.' Matthew Yelovich, a former federal prosecutor who is now a partner in Cleary Gottlieb's white collar criminal practice, agreed that a trial generally brings more to light. "One of the great hallmarks of our system of public trials is the participation of the public in the criminal justice system,' Yelovich said. 'It's not just the right of the government to put on the full force of its evidence, but also for the public to have visibility into the charges, the evidence, and the defenses that might otherwise not be reflected in a resolution agreement.' Bremmeier said the families reason that their objection to another trial-evading agreement will enhance flight safety. Boeing is still recovering from another near-fatal aircraft failure in January 2024, when a door plug blew off a Boeing-made 737 Max 9 flown by Alaska Airlines. 'The door plug incident a year and a half ago is a really good example of that,' she said. Riffel said he pleaded with the government's lawyers during last week's call to reconsider. 'I ask that the DOJ tear this agreement up and reopen the investigation,' he said. 'People committed these crimes, not a corporation … If this non-prosecution agreement is accepted, the truth will never be known, and I believe that the truth is very important to help make sure that this never happens again.' 'The DOJ is giving Boeing another chance; my sons never had a chance.' De Luis said the victims proposed that Boeing make a much more significant monetary contribution in the "single-digit billions" of dollars. The funds, he said, would be used entirely to employ external safety monitors on Boeing's factory floors for five years. Monitors are needed, he said, because in his opinion, the FAA is not currently equipped to fully oversee manufacturing safety. 'People say Boeing is too big to fail. Yes, but it's also too big to produce unsafe airplanes," de Luis said. "We need them to do better. And they have proven time and time again that left to their own devices, they will not do better." Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed. Click here for in-depth analysis of the latest stock market news and events moving stock prices Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's DOJ may let Boeing escape guilty plea. Victims' families aren't happy.
President Trump's Justice Department is weighing whether to let Boeing (BA) out of a criminal trial and guilty plea surrounding two fatal 737 Max 8 crashes, and some family members of the crash victims are not happy about it. They say they view it as a sweetheart deal for the aviation giant at the expense of justice and safety. 'The message that is sent to corporate America is: Don't worry about killing your customers,' said Dr. Javier de Luis, a retired aerospace engineer and MIT lecturer whose sister, Graziella de Luis y Ponce, an interpreter, died in one of the crashes. 'Just treat it as a cost of doing business.' In a 2024 criminal guilty plea deal reached with President Biden's DOJ, Boeing admitted that its workers conspired to defraud aviation regulators before the crashes killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019. Now the idea being considered by the DOJ, according to prosecutors and family members who participated in a call with DOJ officials last Friday, is to offer Boeing protection from prosecution in exchange for an additional $444.5 million from the company, to be divided between impacted families. The 'non-prosecution' agreement would end the criminal fraud charges renewed after prosecutors revoked a prior deferred prosecution agreement they reached with Boeing in January 2021. Boeing declined to comment on the proposal. A trial is set to begin on June 23. The government said in an update on the case published May 19 that Boeing would also be required to pay the maximum fine allowed by law, pay for compliance improvements, and retain an independent compliance consultant, but that it had not decided on whether to enter the proposed agreement. The DOJ also said during the call with victims' families that it had not reached a final decision on the proposal. Avoiding a criminal conviction would be a major victory for the company and would re-insulate Boeing from a criminal fraud trial for a third time, most recently after a federal judge ordered a trial to begin in June. Criminal convictions can foreclose or suspend a company's right to contract with the federal government and frustrate its ability to secure loans. Those consequences have particular meaning for Boeing, which counts the federal government as its largest customer and also happens to be the country's largest exporter. Earlier this year, Boeing won a major contract to build a new F-47 jet fighter for the Pentagon. Last week, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg accompanied Trump on a trip to the Middle East and thanked the president for helping to broker a $96 billion order from Qatar Airways. Sitting next to the president at an event, he said, "All of these aircraft will be built in the United States, creating a significant number of jobs." Tracy Brammeier, a crash victims' lawyer from Clifford Law Offices, said the current plan being considered by the DOJ is the most lenient bargain yet and would reward Boeing with less accountability for its repeated breaches. She added that a trial, on the other hand, could expose who at the company is responsible for the deaths of her clients. 'When it comes to a non-prosecution agreement, there is no judicial oversight. It's truly a private agreement,' Brammeier said. 'With a deferred prosecution agreement, it's truly deferred, so there's a time period where Boeing still has to answer to a judge.' 'You had a criminal who said, 'I want to plead guilty to a crime.' And now all of the sudden, six or seven months later, the government is saying we just decided that they can pay [millions] and we're going to drop the case,' Brammeier added. Matthew Yelovich, a former federal prosecutor who is now a partner in Cleary Gottlieb's white collar criminal practice, said the DOJ has likely settled on the agreement's core terms. 'By the time the government has reached the point where it's inviting the victims to weigh in on a resolution of this size and complexity, the idea that the government would just abandon it altogether doesn't occur very frequently,' Yelovich said. What the government flagged for the victims as its preferred approach, he said, is most likely the substance of what it will present to the court. Court approval is required for the DOJ to dismiss the charges. However, because judges have limited discretion to overstep the government's prosecutorial discretion, it's rare for such a request to be denied. Another family member of victims who is not happy with what is now under consideration is Ike Riffel, who lost two sons, Melvin, 29, and Bennett, 26, in Ethiopian Airlines' Boeing 737 Max crash of 2019. The government's latest proposal, he said, leaves no path for families to uncover who specifically at Boeing knew about the 737 Max's deficiencies. 'We've lost any other options that we have,' Riffel said, adding that the government's prosecution of Boeing's test pilot on multiple counts of fraud ended in acquittal. 'What I'd like to see is a public trial. Who did what? Who said what? Which executives were in on this whole conspiracy?' 'I want Boeing to get back to the gold standard of engineering and safety," Riffel said. "There are a lot of great people we know that work for Boeing that knew nothing about it. No one wants to see Boeing fail. We just want to get the rats out of the cellar." That's reason enough for the judge to reject the deal, he added. 'Hopefully, he'll see through this — that they're dangling money in our face.' Yelovich agreed that a trial generally brings more to light. "One of the great hallmarks of our system of public trials is the participation of the public in the criminal justice system,' Yelovich said. 'It's not just the right of the government to put on the full force of its evidence, but also for the public to have visibility into the charges, the evidence, and the defenses that might otherwise not be reflected in a resolution agreement.' Bremmeier said the families reason that their objection to another trial-evading agreement will enhance flight safety. Boeing is still recovering from another near-fatal aircraft failure in January 2024, when a door plug blew off a Boeing-made 737 Max 9 flown by Alaska Airlines. 'The door plug incident a year and a half ago is a really good example of that,' she said. 'It's unrelated to MCAS. It's unrelated to the crashes that they were victimized by.' Riffel said he pleaded with the government's lawyers during Friday's call to reconsider. 'I ask that the DOJ tear this agreement up and reopen the investigation,' he said. 'People committed these crimes, not a corporation … If this non-prosecution agreement is accepted, the truth will never be known, and I believe that the truth is very important to help make sure that this never happens again.' 'The DOJ is giving Boeing another chance; my sons never had a chance.' De Luis said the victims proposed that Boeing make a much more significant monetary contribution in the "single-digit billions" of dollars. The funds, he said, would be used entirely to employ external safety monitors on Boeing's factory floors for five years. Monitors are needed, he said, because in his opinion, the FAA is not currently equipped to fully oversee manufacturing safety. 'People say Boeing is too big to fail. Yes, but it's also too big to produce unsafe airplanes," de Luis said. "We need them to do better. And they have proven time and time again that left to their own devices, they will not do better." Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed. Click here for in-depth analysis of the latest stock market news and events moving stock prices Sign in to access your portfolio
Irish Examiner
16-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Families of victims appalled as Boeing seems likely to avoid prosecution over 737 Max crashes
Boeing is set to avoid prosecution in a fraud case sparked by two fatal crashes of its bestselling 737 Max jet that killed 346 people, according to sources familiar with the matter. The US Department of Justice is considering a non-prosecution agreement, relatives of the victims were told on Friday, through which the US aerospace giant would not be required to plead guilty. Representatives of the crash victims' families expressed outrage, describing the proposal as 'morally repugnant' after a tense call with senior justice department officials. Boeing and the justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The tentative deal between Boeing and the justice department was first reported by Reuters. In October 2018, 189 people were killed when Lion Air flight 610 fell into the Java Sea off Indonesia. In March 2019, Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa airport, claiming 157 lives. The second crash prompted the worldwide grounding of the 737 Max for almost two years, and left Boeing scrambling to repair its reputation. Investigators from Israel examine wreckage at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 crash near Bishoftu in Ethiopia in 2019. File picture: Mulugeta Ayene/AP While Boeing initially resolved a criminal investigation in January 2021, prosecutors accused it of breaching the settlement in 2024. This led the justice department to offer the firm a controversial plea deal last summer. In December, however, US district Judge Reed O'Connor in Texas rejected the agreement. He cited a diversity and inclusion provision related to the selection of an independent monitor. While Boeing had agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge and pay a fine of up to $487.2m during the final months of the Biden administration, O'Connor's decision meant the Trump administration inherited the case. Under Donald Trump, the justice department has been overhauled, and his administration has faced questions around how aggressively it intends to pursue big companies that break the law. Sanjiv Singh, counsel for 16 families of crash victims, said: 'We are appalled by this sudden possible retreat from criminal prosecution of Boeing. A non-prosecution agreement is morally repugnant and lacks the teeth and bite to cause fundamental change in Boeings safety practices.' Shares in Boeing slipped 0.5% in New York. Read More James Comey investigated over seashell photo claimed to be 'threat' against Trump
