The Department of Justice is offering a plea deal to Boeing to avoid a trial on the company’s safety failures. The deal slaps the company with a fine and a few years of monitoring. It is unacceptable after the series of crashes in recent years. These debacles have revealed a company with deep-seated problems that require a harsher punishment to produce the needed changes.

After the deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019, Boeing paid fines and promised to make changes to avoid criminal charges. In May, the Department of Justice found that Boeing had not made the required changes. On Sunday, the families of the victims announced that the Department of Justice was hoping to reach a plea deal with Boeing. This deal would require Boeing to plead guilty to one count of fraud, pay $244 million as a fine, and have an independent monitor oversee its operations for three years.

Boeing’s continued failures since the crashes have demonstrated the company’s troubles remain. In January, a door flew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 operated by Alaskan Airlines. After the Federal Aviation Administration grounded other Max 9s, United Airlines found loose bolts similar to the Alaskan Airlines flight on their Max 9 planes.

Now the Boeing Starliner is also facing its own difficulties. Several thruster malfunctions and a helium leak have delayed an astronaut crew’s return to Earth. But do not worry, a NASA manager reassured Americans by saying, “I want to make it very clear that Butch and Suni are not stranded in space.” Spokesmen famously say things like that when everything is going according to plan.

The challenges Boeing is facing have been decades in the making. At the turn of the millennium, Boeing’s leadership changed and outsourced much of its production. Now at least 600 suppliers produce Boeing’s airplane parts, many of whom use subcontractors. Harry Stonecipher, the CEO of Boeing from 2003 to 2005, said: “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm.”

Whistleblowers’ complaints have shown how Boeing’s profit-first culture has prioritized speed over safety. Moreover, whistleblowers have also described Boeing as having a culture of retaliation against employees who speak out about production problems.

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Boeing is a company that has increasingly emphasized profits over safety for more than 20 years. The plea deal’s $244 million fine is peanuts compared to the company’s valuation of $113 billion. Last May, Boeing secured a $7.5 billion contract with the Air Force for guided bomb kits.

Boeing has repeatedly demonstrated its inability to self-regulate. It has benefited from taxpayers’ money and the goodwill of consumers around the world. The proposed plea deal is a slap on the wrist and will not be enough to spark the change necessary in the company. A heavy fine, long-term structural change, and increased governmental oversight of Boeing are necessary to protect flyers.