Boeing 737 MAX test pilot indicted for misleading the Federal Aviation Administration

Two years after the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft were grounded, the US justice indicted a former Boeing chief technical pilot. He is accused of having misled the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA, the US regulator) during the certification process of the 737 MAX, two of which crashed causing 346 deaths.

Mark Forkner, 49, “provided the agency with false, inaccurate and incomplete information about a new part of the Boeing 737 MAX, the MCAS flight control system,” the Department of Justice justifies in a statement.

The MCAS software (Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System) is supposed to prevent the plane from diving down and was involved in both fatal accidents.

Boeing has already acknowledged its responsibility in the manipulation of the authorities and agreed in January to pay more than $2.5 billion to settle certain lawsuits. The company admitted that two of its employees had misled the FAA. Mark Forkner is the first individual to be prosecuted personally in this case.

According to prosecution documents, Forkner discovered in 2016 an important change made to the MCAS. In a message to a colleague disclosed in 2019, he notably indicated that the software made the plane difficult to fly in a simulator.

But he deliberately chose not to share this information with the FAA, which had led the regulator not to require specific training for pilots and not to include a reference to MCAS in training documents.

“Basically, that means I lied to regulators,” Forkner wrote to his colleague at the time. He also boasted of being able to deceive his FAA interlocutors to obtain certification of the MCAS system.

Forkner is charged with two counts of fraud involving aircraft parts in interstate commerce, and four counts of wire fraud. If convicted, Faulkner faces as long as 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud, and 10 years for each count of fraud involving aircraft parts in interstate commerce.

The 737 Max was formally approved in March 2017 and made its first commercial flight a few weeks later.