Almost a month after the crash of a 737 Max in Indonesia, its manufacturer Boeing issued a press release.

The company said it was "deeply saddened" by the accident, but at the same time tried to reassure the public: "As our customers and their passengers continue to fly the 737 Max to hundreds of locations around the world every day, they have our assurance that that the 737 Max is as safe as any plane that has ever flown the sky.”

Roland Lindner

Business correspondent in New York.

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Almost four months later, in March 2019, another 737 Max crashed, this time in Ethiopia.

And unlike after the first crash, regular flight operations were over very quickly.

Within days, regulators in the US and other parts of the world grounded the 737 Max from flying. The crashes and resulting grounding have pushed Boeing into the worst crisis in its history.

Now the company is being caught up again, and it's about the way it communicated after the accidents.

He has now reached a settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which has accused him of having made "significantly misleading public statements".

In doing so, he deceived investors and violated anti-fraud clauses in US securities laws.

Boeing agreed to pay a $200 million fine, and CEO Dennis Muilenburg at the time of the crash will also pay $1 million.

As is often the case in such settlements, Boeing and Muilenburg have neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.

A total of 346 people died in the two crashes.

Investigations revealed that in both cases an automatic flight system called MCAS, specially developed by Boeing for the 737 Max, played an important role.

This system was intended to push the aircraft down in the event its nose raises undesirably.

In the accidents, however, it was activated by mistake and put pilots in a situation where they could not control the aircraft.

After the crash, Boeing boss Muilenburg initially tried to downplay his company's responsibility.

He often spoke of a "chain of events" that led to the accidents.

The security risk was known when the opinion was issued

The SEC has now said that Boeing knew at the time of the soothing statement after the crash in Indonesia that the MCAS system posed a safety risk, but did not mention it.

A new version was already being worked on at the time.

Instead, Boeing suggested that pilot error and inadequate maintenance of the machine by Lion Air had contributed to the accident.

An early version of the press release contained references to MCAS, but Muilenburg suggested removing them, which was done.

A few days before the publication, Muilenburg wrote in an e-mail with a view to negative media reports that Boeing was being pushed too much on the defensive and had to go more on the offensive.

The SEC also considered Muilenburg's statements after the second crash to be misleading.

For example, the Boeing boss said at the time that there were no omissions in the certification process for the 737 Max.

"We have followed the exact same steps in our design and certification steps that produce safe aircraft time and time again."

Muilenburg was replaced as CEO in December 2019, and Boeing has been led by Dave Calhoun since then.

The company has already made other comparisons under him.

For example, early last year, as part of criminal proceedings, there was an agreement with the Justice Department that involved a total payment of $2.5 billion.

Overall, the 737 Max cost the company more than $20 billion.

The ban on the plane was lifted in the United States at the end of 2020, but it took longer elsewhere.

In the meantime, the company has again received many orders from airlines for the machine.