NEW YORK/WASHINGTON April 24 (Reuters) -

U.S. Department of Justice officials are planning to decide

as soon as late May whether Boeing ( BA ) violated an agreement

that shielded the planemaker from criminal prosecution over

fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, people familiar with the matter

said.

Justice Department officials revealed the timeline in a

closed-door meeting on Wednesday where families of the victims

of the two Boeing 737 MAX crashes pressed U.S. officials to

criminally prosecute the planemaker.

The families have argued that Boeing ( BA ) violated a 2021

deal with prosecutors to overhaul its compliance program

following the crashes, which killed 346 people.

Federal prosecutors had agreed to ask a judge to dismiss a

criminal charge against Boeing ( BA ) so long as it complied with the

deal's terms over a three-year period.

A panel, however, blew off a new Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet during

a Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines flight, just two days before

the 2021 agreement expired.

Justice Department officials are now weighing that incident

as part of a broader probe into whether Boeing ( BA ) violated the

deal, known as a deferred prosecution agreement, or DPA, two

people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

A government official at the Wednesday meeting said the

Justice Department will likely decide by the end of May if they

believe there was a breach or not, two sources told Reuters.

If the DOJ decides there was a breach, they would have

another meeting about the next steps, such as extending the DPA,

negotiating a guilty plea or taking the case to trial, the

sources said.

Family members argue an independent monitor is needed to

ensure Boeing's ( BA ) compliance with the agreement. Boeing's ( BA ) deal had

no such requirement, unlike some past agreements with other

companies.

Boeing ( BA ) was not immediately reachable for comment, while the

Justice Department declined comment.

In January 2021, Boeing ( BA ) agreed to pay $2.5 billion to

resolve a criminal investigation into the company's conduct

surrounding the crashes. The U.S. planemaker agreed to

compensate victims' relatives and overhaul its compliance

practices as part of the deal with prosecutors.

In an earlier April meeting with family members' lawyers,

Justice Department officials said they were looking at

circumstances outlined in the 2021 deal that could put Boeing ( BA ) in

breach of the agreement, such as the company committing a felony

or misleading U.S. officials, one of the people familiar with

the matter said.

The agreement gives U.S. officials six months from the

deal's Jan. 7 expiration to decide whether to prosecute Boeing ( BA )

on a charge that the company conspired to defraud the Federal

Aviation Administration or pursue other alternatives to

dismissing the case.

Officials plan to do so within that time frame while

investigations into the Jan. 5 in-flight blowout continue, which

could inform their decision, one of the people said. The people

spoke on condition of anonymity.

Prosecutors are expected to lean heavily on findings from

the FAA's investigations, one of the people previously told

Reuters.

The FAA, for instance, is investigating a Boeing ( BA ) engineer's

claims that the company dismissed safety and quality concerns in

the production of the planemaker's 787 and 777 jets.

In a congressional hearing last week, the engineer testified

that Boeing ( BA ) sidelined him when he raised concerns. Reuters has

not independently verified his claims, which Boeing ( BA ) has

disputed.