Test pilot for Boeing 737 Max could face criminal charges for misleading regulators
A test pilot for Boeing will reportedly be hit with criminal charges over allegations that he misled aviation regulators about safety issues behind two 737 Max plane crashes, which left a combined 346 people dead.
Mark Forkner served as the chief technical pilot during the aircraft’s development, a role that required he act as lead contact with the Federal Aviation Administration for how airline pilots should be trained to fly the new jet.
The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, citing anonymous sources, reported Forkner could face criminal prosecution “in the coming weeks,” marking what could be “the first attempt to hold a Boeing employee accountable” for conduct leading up to the pair of tragic crashes.
The first occurred in Indonesia on Oct. 29, 2018. All 189 passengers and crew were killed when the Lion Air jet crashed into the Java Sea only 13 minutes after takeoff from Soekarno–Hatta International Airport in Jakarta. It was also the first major incident involving the jet, which was introduced the year prior in 2017.
Just five months later, another Boeing 737 Max crashed in Ethiopia shortly after takeoff. Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 went down just six minutes after departing Addis Ababa Bole International Airport on March 10, 2019, killing all 159 people onboard.
In both instances, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System or MCAS has been blamed for putting the two Boeing 737 MAX jets into the fatal nosedives. Crew errors were also cited as a cause in both crashes.
The automated system was initially designed to activate during flight conditions that airline pilots wouldn’t typically encounter and eventually expanded to include more flight situations.
After the crash, Boeing and U.S. regulators asserted that pilots should be able to regain control in emergency situations by following steps that include turning off an anti-stall system designed specifically for the Max model.
Investigators previously found that Forkner told regulators the faulty MCAS flight control system was safe, while at the same time, telling colleagues that the system was “egregious” after completing flight simulator tests.
In chat messages released by congressional investigators, Forkner said he did not know the MCAS had been updated to become more potent and that he “basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly).”
Following the second plane crash, Boeing grounded the 737 MAX passenger airliner worldwide until December 2020.
