An ex-company manager is accused of liabming the air regulator to obtain the certification of the anti-stall control system at the origin of two accidents that made 346 dead.
American justice was charged on Thursday, October 14, a former Boeing test pilot, accused of having misled the Agency supervising the aviation, during the 737 max certification process, including two devices. have been crushed in 2018 and 2019 doing 346 dead.
Mark Forkner “provided the Agency with false, inaccurate and incomplete information on a new part of the Boeing 737 Max ‘flight control system, called MCAS, at the origin of the two accidents, explains the Ministry of Justice in a statement.
The former trial pilot was officially charged with a great Jury in Texas of two charges for “fraud involving aeronautical parts”, and four counts for “electronic communication fraud” . If it is convicted, it theoretically risk up to 100 years in prison.
“Basically, that means I lied”
According to the Prosecution documents, Mr. Forkner had discovered in 2016 information about an important change on the MCAS software supposed to avoid stacking stalls on the device. In a message to a colleague revealed in 2019, he had indicated that the software made the plane difficult to control in simulator.
But he deliberately chose not to share this information with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Civil Aviation Control Authority in the United States, which led the latter not to require training specific pilots, and not include reference to the MCAS in training documents for drivers.
“Basically, that means I lied to the regulators,” Mr. Forkner wrote to his colleague. According to documents published in early 2020, it also boasted to be able to deceive its interlocutors from the FAA to obtain the certification of the MCAS anti-stall system.
“Mr. Forkner has hidden essential information to the regulator to try to save money for Boeing,” commented a Federal Texas attorney, Chad Meacham. “The Ministry of Justice can not tolerate such a fraud, especially in a sector where the stakes are as high,” he added.
Prohibited flight devices for a year and a half
The 737 max was formally approved in March 2017. Then in October 2018, a device from the Lion Air company crashed at sea shortly after its take-off, killing the 189 people on board. In March 2019, the Crash of a 737 max from Ethiopian Airlines made 157 dead. During both accidents, the flight control software had been packed on the basis of erroneous information transmitted by one of the two probes of the device. It was only in October 2018, after the first crash, that the FAA was aware of “key details” on the MCAS.
All 737 max were forbidden flights in March 2019, before being allowed to revolve at the end of the year 2020, once the software modified.
Boeing has already recognized its responsibility in manipulating authorities and accepted in January to pay more than $ 2.5 billion to pay some lawsuits. The aeronautical giant had recognized that two of his employees had misled the FAA. Mr. Forkner is the first individual personally prosecuted criminal in this case.