Boeing’s former chief technical pilot on the 737 MAX is expected to be indicted on criminal charges in the next few days. The Wall Street Journal first reported Thursday that Mark Forkner, who left Boeing about two years ago, is expected to be indicted in the next few days to face allegations that he misled FAA officials on the significance of the addition of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) to the MAX. MCAS, which adjusts the angle of the horizontal stabilizer to change the pitch of the aircraft, was installed to compensate for aerodynamic differences between the MAX and earlier generation 737s. It was designed to operate in the background without pilot input and was cited in two fatal crashes involving the MAX.
Though every indication is that the very top of Boeing was complicit in MAX decisions, it is a minion that has to fall on the sword. What is Boeings successes to date:
Max 737 - Crashes an production held for over two years
Boeing Starliner - software issues delay a un-crewed test for almost a year then when they try again they have mechanical issues that push it back another year.
KC Tanker - Parts found in wing tanks and other issues
787 - Cracks in fuselage
777 - Something (I forget the details)
At this point it truly should the CEO and top executives that should be held for trial for the MAX and the absolute blundering in managing the company.
I agree that the FAA and Boeing are compartmentalizing the blame onto them.
I can guarantee that Forkner wasn’t the person who promised Southwest a $1 million rebate for every MAX if retraining was required. Even Southwest should have known that a perverse incentive like that eroded safety.
So, how is an MCAS failure any difference from a horizontal trim runaway.? 2 US pilots had the mcas fail and they both we able to correctly disconnect the trim system and manually trimmed the aircraft.
Boeing’s big failure was in having 2 aoa sensors and using only one to feed the system, vs the 3 that airbus uses , and all 3 input the aoa data, so that if one fails it is overruled by the other 2.
The FAA “engineers” who signed off on the thing are just as complicit as any Boeing employees but – of course and as usual – nobody is talking about them. You wouldn’t have to be a first year avionics type to know that – as Jim H already said – having a single AOA probe feeding the system unless you paid extra is a single point failure mode. The FAA didn’t see that? What are we paying those people for … signatures and glad handing??
This plane went against all engineering protocols. A system that wasn’t in the manual, one that wasn’t redundant, one that had no indication it was working, one with no malfunction warnings and finally no emergency procedures. When Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas and allowed those people to infiltrate management that was the start of the issues. The bean counters took over and pushed the airplane builders to the side. There is fundamentally nothing wrong with the max but to save a few bucks and to market the plane Boeing ignored all the good engineering practices that made them what they were.
In this case, it’s not even the FAA that should get the blame, but rather Congress who directed the FAA to expand their DER program. The FAA was dependent upon Boeing accurately representing their engineering decisions. Given how it was structured, the FAA had no reason to suspect that MCAS was anything other than a minor system.
And also the Board of Directors. At a minimum, the records and any recordings of their board meetings should be subpoenaed to find out what they knew about the MAX, and when.
“Misleading the FAA?” What statute is that?
I remain a fan if Boeing products overall
Commercial pilots are supposed to be able to recognize and respond to a runaway trim situation without having to learn to pronounce the big words engineers came up with to describe the defective widget causing it.
Little attention seems to be paid to date of the consequences of untimely intervention in the 737, and likely most transport category aircraft. Once the stab moves to a certain AND setting, neither the electric or human are strong enough to more it absent a hard push-over to unload the tail.
I’m a retired piston driver. Any of our type rated friends out there care to chime in?
Can everyone repeat after me: Fall guy?
There is no way that all the top brass at Boeing should walk away from this with “clean” hands. The issues with Boeing have been steady since the “financial” folks wiggled their slimy way into the top seat. Financial people are and should remain sidebar positions. Operators and engineers should be the management. The advice and oversight of the finance folks is necessary but they have absolutely no experience in getting the job done and done right. Boeing’s long held reputation for producing a solid, safe, productive product is shot. Why one might ask? Because the focus at Boeing over the past several years has been to do more with less and faster. The 737 issues are just the tip of the iceberg. Reducing production and engineering staff while trying to keep the production rate up has resulted in a dramatic drop in quality. That’s what happens when “finance” people are in charge because all they look at is the stock price and it’s affect on stockholders. Now, their efforts have killed people and eroded faith in Boeing’s 737, 787, 777, and KC-46 products. How much more is it going to take to either get the Board off it’s fanny or put the company under?
In my opinion its very unlikely a chief technical pilot would mislead the regulators over a design feature.As well in my opinion its unlikely anything “from above”would put “intense pressure”on a chief
pilot for a change of design feature that needed a few dollars of extra training to get used to.As Ghandi would say,The customer is right,in this case the customer want their planes flying with paying pax,so the manufacturer would be doing everything in their ability to keep them in the air.
This seems to be an important point to me as well. If the government regulators are going to accept the word of companies, then why do we have the regulators? There must be some dereliction at some point in the system at the FAA unless the evidence of fraud is more serious than a lie. Like the VW emissions scandal where the cars were programmed to run differently when under the test conditions.
The finance gurus have infected everything. It’s like the medieval church. They influence, through personal connections and pseudo religious signals, what companies will get the backing of the holy capital, NYC. They do have too much power.
That being said, Boeing has become a state industry. It’s about as socialized as it can get. It’s beyond too big to fail. Seems to me the US owned the business when it had multiple builders. It’s only a correlation, but it seems there is something to it.
Lots of failures all the way around. However, it appears to me that somebody is out to get Boeing any way they can to cover up their own complicit behavior. With all of this, one has to look at the bigger picture. That is government institutional failures all the way across the board. Look at the number of government institutions that are no longer performing the tasks for which they were created in the first place. As a footnote to all of this, how many MAX crashes have occurred in the U.S. or with U.S. carriers? None, to my knowledge.
“ According to the Seattle Times, part of the Deferred Prosecution Agreement between Boeing and the FAA called out Forkner and his deputy chief pilot for allegedly misrepresenting the significance of the addition of the MCAS while exonerating senior brass. ”
The deal is already made between all parties. It’s just a matter of getting through the legal system from this point forward. All of those will “pay” has already been pre-determined. All those who will get a “pass” have been also been pre-determined. Typical modern business “justice”…aka…Let’s Make a Deal.