Posted on 09/17/2021 4:37:14 AM PDT by WhoisAlanGreenspan?
Federal prosecutors are preparing to criminally charge a former Boeing pilot who is suspected of misleading regulators about safety issues during the approval process for the troubled 737 MAX, according to a new report.
Mark Forkner, Boeing's 737 MAX chief technical pilot during the aircraft's development, could face charges in the next few weeks, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.
Prosecutors have been probing whether Forkner intentionally lied to the Federal Aviation Administration about the nature of new flight control software on the jet, which suffered two deadly crashes within months, killing 346 people.
Forkner's attorney David Gerger did not immediately respond to an inquiry from DailyMail.com early on Friday.
Gerger has previously said that his client would never intentionally hide a safety issue.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
It wasn't immediately clear what criminal charges might be brought against Forkner, but Boeing previously admitted in a settlement that two unnamed employees conspired to defraud the FAA about MAX training issues to benefit themselves and the company.
Forkner had said he might have unintentionally misled regulators, in a series of internal messages from 2016 that became public in October.
The messages appeared to have been the first publicly known observations that the crucial MCAS anti-stall system behaved erratically during testing before the aircraft entered service.
Malfunctions with the MCAS system, complicated by inadequate training, were implicated in the fatal crashes of Lion Air 610 in 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines 302 just months later.
test pilots don’t conspire against federal regulators and investigators all by themselves.
Got to have a scapegoat...
Boeing benefited from the exclusion, because it reduced the mandatory new training for pilots who had flown older models of the 737, making the upgraded jet more attractive to potential airline customers.
That Boeing benefited is understood, but how would Forkner benefit? He wouldn't. He's being railroaded.
Then in May Boeing also agreed to pay a $17 million fine and improve its supply chain and production practices after installing unapproved equipment on hundreds of planes.
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Sounds like Boeing has larger issues of corporate corruption than a single test pilot.
The DC-10 case is discussed in detail in the book, The DC-10 Case: A Study in Applied Ethics, Technology, and Society (John H. Fielder, Douglas Birsch, editors, State University of New York Press, 1992, 360 pages).
“test pilots don’t conspire against federal regulators and investigators all by themselves.”
Yep, the higher-ups destroyed Boeing by creating a culture that prioritized accountants over engineers. This is the result.
He’s a witch!....He’s a witch!(Monty Python film)Same mentality of anyone who could think that a pilot kept all of the screwed up system away from the BRILLIANT COLLEGE puke engineers and software developers of Boeing with misleading text’x. OR maybe it all depends on what your definition of what misleading is?
If it’s the case that he mislead the FAA then there must have been some monetary reason. Test pilots have nothing to gain by misleading the FAA unless they are compensated for it. Who was doing the compensation?
“That Boeing benefited is understood, but how would Forkner benefit? He wouldn’t. He’s being railroaded.”
While working for another company, I spent several weeks at Boing’s main development center. It was almost like being immersed in a separate culture where there are ridged rules. It became apparent that the Boeing employees thought the company could alter any government rule they wanted to. Need more money? The Boeing agents would massage their Congressional toys and it would appear. Obviously, everything has limits and they understood that, but they seemed to view the government as a poorly managed, somewhat cantankerous subsidiary.
As for the test pilot, he’s being sacrificed to protect Boeing.
I think Boeing was absolutely great for about the first fifty years after WWII. But I believe America would be better served now by breaking it up.
The CEO when the first Max was delivered was an engineer, not an accountant.
Nice paychecks and retirements for ‘team players’. It usually doesn’t work out as well for ‘loose cannons’ and whistleblowers.
Look at the corrupt criminals at GM that escaped justice for their conspiracy about the ignition system.
Yep, and the lower on the totem pole, the bigger the target.
One of my college professors in engineering once said that the only real numbers have a dollar sign in front of them. (For non-math people, there are such things as imaginary numbers.)
So these 300+ negligent homicides are all this one Boeing employee’s fault, huh? What ever happened to “trust but VERIFY” in Obama’s FAA?
The FAA shares guilt.
Exactly. This is pathetic...there’s no way that this escaped engineering. There’s no way that Boeing wasn’t aware. This only happens from pressure from management.
Nor do they design the aircraft.
Will the ceo and the sales guys be indicted next?
The 737 MAX software was written by Indians.
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