The U.S. Justice Department has initiated a criminal investigation into a recent incident involving a Boeing 737 MAX aircraft operated by Alaska Airlines. The investigation aims to determine if Boeing violated a previous settlement with the federal government that was reached after two fatal 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019. This settlement, which amounted to $2.5 billion, came after Boeing admitted that two of its former employees had misled the Federal Aviation Administration about the training requirements for a flight-control system, which was implicated in the crashes that resulted in 346 fatalities.