WASHINGTON: A former chief technical pilot for Boeing was charged on Thursday (Oct 14) with deceiving federal regulators concerning the evaluation of the company’s 737 MAX plane in order to save the planemaker money, the US Justice Department said.
Mark Forkner, 49, was indicted for scheming to defraud Boeing’s US-based airline customers to obtain tens of millions of dollars for Boeing.
Boeing and a lawyer for Forkner did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The indictment said Forkner provided the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) with “materially false, inaccurate, and incomplete information” about a new part of the flight controls for the Boeing 737 MAX, called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).
According to court documents, Forkner had discovered information in 2016 about a major change made to the MCAS that was supposed to prevent stalling, but deliberately chose not to share the details with the FAA.
As a result, the FAA did not include a reference to the MCAS in a critical document or, in turn, in training manuals for pilots.
The MCAS was tied to two fatal crashes of the 737 MAX over a five month period that killed 346 people and led to the plane’s 19-month grounding by the FAA, lifted in November 2020.
The FAA declined comment.
In January, Boeing agreed to pay more than US$2.5 billion in fines and compensation after reaching a deferred prosecution agreement with the US Department of Justice over the MAX crashes.
“In an attempt to save Boeing money, Forkner allegedly withheld critical information from regulators,” said Acting US Attorney Chad E Meacham in Northern Texas. “His callous choice to mislead the FAA hampered the agency’s ability to protect the flying public and left pilots in the lurch, lacking information about certain 737 MAX flight controls.”
According to documents published in early 2020, he boasted that he could deceive his FAA contacts to obtain certification for the MCAS.
One November 2016 message from Forkner released in 2019 said he was working at “jedi-mind tricking regulators into accepting the training that I got accepted by FAA”.
Forkner is charged with two counts of fraud involving aircraft parts in interstate commerce and four counts of wire fraud. He is also accused of conspiring against Boeing customers who purchased 737 MAX aircraft by withholding critical information.
He is expected to make his initial court appearance on Friday in Fort Worth, Texas.
If convicted, he could face up to 100 years in prison.
“Forkner allegedly withheld critical information from regulators,” said Texas federal prosecutor Chad Meacham.
“The Department of Justice will not tolerate fraud – especially in industries where the stakes are so high.”
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