ExBoeing pilot indicted over Max tests
DALLAS: A former Boeing pilot has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of deceiving safety regulators about the 737 Max jetliner, which was later involved in two deadly crashes.
The indictment charges Mark A. Forkner with giving the Federal Aviation Administration false and incomplete information about an automated flightcontrol system that played a role in the crashes, which killed 346 people.
Prosecutors said because of Forkner’s alleged deception, the system was not mentioned in pilot manuals or training materials.
A lawyer for Forkner did not immediately respond for comment. Boeing and the FAA declined to comment.
Forkner (49) was charged with two counts of fraud involving aircraft parts in interstate commerce and four counts of wire fraud.
Federal prosecutors said he was expected to make his first appearance in court today in Fort Worth, Texas. If convicted on all counts, he could face a sentence of up to 100 years in prison.
The indictment charges that he hid information about a flightcontrol system that activated erroneously and pushed down the noses of Max jets that crashed in 2018 in Indonesia, and 2019 in Ethiopia.
The pilots tried unsuccessfully to regain control, but both planes went into nosedives minutes after taking off.
Forkner was Boeing’s chief technical pilot on the Max programme.
Prosecutors said that Forkner learned about an important change to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System flightcontrol system in 2016, but withheld the information from the FAA.
That led the agency to delete reference to MCAS from a technical report and, in turn, it did not appear in pilot manuals. Most pilots did not know about MCAS until after the first crash.
Prosecutors suggested that Forkner played down the power of the system to avoid a requirement that pilots undergo extensive and expensive retraining, which would increase training costs for airlines. Congressional investigators suggested additional training would have added $US1 million ($NZ1.4 million) to the price of each plane.
Forkner, who lives in a Fort Worth suburb, joined Southwest Airlines after leaving Boeing, but left the airline about a year ago.
Chicagobased Boeing agreed to a $US2.5 billion settlement to end a Justice Department investigation into the company’s actions.
The Government agreed to drop a criminal charge of conspiracy against Boeing after three years if the company carried out terms of the January 2020 settlement.
The settlement included a $US243.6 million fine, nearly $US1.8 billion for airlines that bought the plane and $US500 million for a fund to compensate families of the passengers who were killed.
Dozens of families of passengers are suing Boeing in federal court in Chicago.
A Boeing Co and US regulators said yesterday that some titanium 787 Dreamliner parts had been improperly manufactured over the past three years, the latest in a series of problems to plague the aircraft.
The quality issue did not affect the immediate safety of flights, the company and the FAA said. — Reuters