The former chief technical pilot of the Boeing 737 Max program was found not guilty of deceiving regulators after less than two hours of jury deliberation.
Not Guilty: Boeing 737 MAX Chief Technical Pilot Spared Jail Time
Mark Forkner faced four counts of wire fraud for what federal prosecutors called a deliberate and willful attempt to mislead regulators and customers over the significance of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) onboard the 737 MAX versus previous models. Forkner’s was accused of deliberately downplaying the system in order to sell more airplanes and dissuade regulators from more scrutiny.
In 2019, I shared a series of text messages that Forkner exchanged with a former Boeing engineer on November 6, 2016, four months before the FAA certified the 737 MAX.
- “MCAS is now active down to M2. It’s running rampant in the sim on me, at least that’s what Vince thinks is happening.”
- “so I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly)”
- “I’m levelling off at 4000ft, 230 knots and the plane is trimming itself like craxy, I’m like, WHAT?”
- “granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious”
- “they’re all so damn busy, and getting pressure from the program”
- “there are still some real fundamental issues that they claim they’re aware of”
- “nah, I’m locked in my hotel room with an ice cold grey goose, I’ll probably fire off a few dozen inappropriate emails before I call it a night”
- “I’d ask for a job in sales where I can just get paid to drink with customers and lie about how awesome our airplanes are”
Those text messages were exchanged as part of a nine-minute conversation. For a background on MCAS, read this.
The government used these messages to argue Forkner had knowledge he was concealing essential information from regulators. During his trial, however, Forkner’s defense team argued that he was being scapegoated for the two 737 MAX crashes, wasn’t an engineer, and was simply following the instructions from engineer and design teams over MCAS.
A jury agreed and found him not guilty in under two hours. One juror later remarked that the government had woefully failed to prove its case, telling The Wall Street Journal:
“We saw it as more a corporate and regulatory failure of communication.”
Boeing has already agreed to pay the U.S. Department of Justice a $244 million fine and $2.3 billion in compensation to airlines as well as the families of crash victims.
CONCLUSION
Despite damning text messages, Mark Forkner was found not guilty by a jury of his peers. The former Boeing 737 MAX chief test pilot has avoided jail time and taking the fall for a system which played a role in the crash of two airplanes.
image: Boeing
Never forget how important the role of juror is. Being a juror is the most direct form of democracy as you can prevent a guilty verdict no matter what anyone else says. It makes no sense why anyone is ever convicted for tax laws, drug laws, self defense from attack, self defense from government agents, and ridiculous laws/rules/regulations when there is at least 1 conservative on every jury. Being a juror means you don’t have to listen to what a judge, prosecutor, cop, or politicians say. That’s why it’s such an important role but most want to get out of jury duty and most serve as rubber stamps form the government. People who complain about certain communities getting railroaded by the legal system should realize being on a jury can prevent convictions on insufficient evidence. If on a jury, you can set a very high standard higher than anyone else as we’ve had people on death row and thousands of people in prison based on direct eye witness testimony that was later proven by dna evidence to be false. We have a reality where anyone can hack into computers/servers/devices and where fingerprints and dna can be made in a lab to frame people. We have digital fakes of Presidents. It’s important the standards be extremely high and being a juror can do this.
In this case, the texts themselves say the man unintentionally misled regulators which means he found out the system wasn’t so great after the fact. There is no evidence system he told the regulators anything he thought was false at the time. It’s very normal for problems to come up after a system has been implemented. The danger here in this case is the texts can be taken out of context. People routinely joke around and complain about problems at work. People complain about systems sucking but that doesn’t mean someone thinks it is a danger that warrants the system being taken out of service. Ultimately, the system proved to be a big problem for foreign pilots who are trained differently than Western pilots. MCAS did suck and even western pilots complained about it. Boeing used to be the anti automation aircraft and MCAS made Boeing into the opposite, unbeknownst to a lot of pilots.
Please explain “and ridiculous laws/rules/regulations when there is at least 1 conservative on every jury.”. Why does it matter of there were no conservatives or all conservatives vs any number vs. just one in your statement. I’m far from conservative by what’s being conservative have to do with this trial or any trial for that matter?
When all the cases settled, when all the procedures completed, the fact remains that 2 plane crashed and 340 people died, and nobody is going to jail.
You can explain US law, you can explain jury, you can explain whatever. This is still wrong, and this is, in large part, because most dead are Africans and Asians. Fault is not at the jury, fault is at our government and our laws.
Just don’t act surprised when they don’t trust FAA or Boeing as much from here forward. They have seen how “our law” treats “their lives”.
You are seriously claiming that the jury ruled the way they did because they’re RACIST? You actually believe this? Clearly, too much imbibing of the woke kool aid has affected your little gray cells. For one thing, plenty of westerners were on those planes too and I seriously doubt that the racial makeup of the victims was even considered by the jury.
What was considered was proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Apparently, they didn’t prove that to the jury’s satisfaction. While I think we agree that we would prefer to see this guy (and all others at Boeing) held accountable, I’m sure it wasn’t because of the color of the people who died. That’s patently absurd.
You need to learn to read. I didn’t blame jury for anything. Get over it already.
“You can explain US law, you can explain jury, you can explain whatever. This is still wrong, and this is, in large part, because most dead are Africans and Asians. Fault is not at the jury, fault is at our government and our laws.”
It sure reads like you’re blaming everyone (btw, your allegations are invalid without blaming everyone based on your comment – and alleging that the motivation is because most dead were Africans and Asians (actually people from dozens of countries were killed). And I maintain that this take on what happened is nonsense.
I don’t think the problem is US law or racism so much as politics and the way the tragedy unfolded. My take: Boeing had merged with Mcdonnell Douglas, and the culture of Boeing shifted away from exceptional engineering and civilian safety to a modern corporate “stacked ranking” environment driven by rolling layoffs, cost cutting, outsourcing, politics, and so on.
Executive management previous to Sullenberger looked for a quick and dirty way to make a profit so they slapped on big engines onto an old airframe and then hacked computer software to deal with the bugs. ALL planes are by definition unstable (they’re not balloons that are buoyant) but the 737MAX had additional balance issues making it less safe than it could be. Consider how I put that: “less safe”. As in there’s no such thing as perfect safety, but as a retrofit, it was less safe than an entirely new design.
Sadly, the option to rebuild from scratch was difficult since (expensive) senior engineers had been laid off. The entire corporate machine of Boeing produced the 737Max. Nobody said “Let’s design an aircraft that’s less safe than it could be” but that’s what happened.
It’s tough to find someone to prosecute in all that because it’s systematic. To pin it on (one) or many CEOs would be difficult since it’s a combination of negligence from so many moving parts. Even now, I doubt Boeing has significantly changed. They just don’t make planes like they used to, although the plane is “safe enough” by FAA standards. My 20 year old Elantra is also ‘safe enough’ for the roads, but it’s not as safe as a new Volvo.
Politics kicks in that the CEO has golfed with a lot of powerful people and the whole system in the USA is run like this so to “fix” Boeing would fix a lot of other things as well that just don’t want to be fixed. In corporate America I heard a manager tell me that he couldn’t address a legitimate issue I had raised because he worried it would create pressure to fix a lot of other things so it was just easier to ignore the problem than rocking the boat. Yes, that’s right, he was afraid my suggestion would create HUGE changes in the company, even if they were good.
So think about that for a moment: Our corporate culture often squashes good ideas, or concerns, because they worry about standing out because there are costs involved, even short term ones, versus just short term savings even if there are long term consequences ahead.
“Cutting corners” to save a quick buck is the modern American way because the guy who does it has moved onto a new job before the planes literally fall out of the sky. It’s sickening. I had read that Japanese CEO’s were all on jet planes at Y2K so if any of them crashed, their lives were on the line with everyone else. I wish we had something like that here.
Good for him – hope he gets his legal bills and lost pay covered – justice served on this one for the org using him as a cheap scapegoat
A serious miscarriage of justice. @chris is right, how is anyone supposed to trust the FAA or Boeing when people like this who are patently guilty just get to walk away without repercussions. Ditto for the ex-CEO.
Okay, But will we ever know what caused the China 737-800 to drop from the sky as a stone?
Blaming this guy for the mishap is stupidity. He made choices within constraints of capitalism that resulted in these deaths. Chalk it up to price of capitalism. The company directors should look into the mirror and say “i am the scum responsible for this”
Similarly blaming people that shoot people dead, or steal or burn buildings down is stupidity. They also make choices within constraints of the economy. Don’t blame them. Instead look in the mirror and say ” i am the scum responsible for this”. Some of white racist fu$ks that love to blame the perpetrators need to look at their hand that led to those choices. Chalk it upto price of capitalism and freedom and lose your fake moral superiority.
Interesting logic. Murder is not murder but capitalism. Brilliant defense Stalin. We cannot blame a perpetrator but look in the mirror and blame yourself. Lets see how that work for the 6 Jan fu$ks
He’s obviously guilty, but so is his boss. I can’t imagine the pain the families to the people they killed must still be going through.
American law is pretty dumbed down, unfortunately, just as American engineering, clearly. Who cares if you guys get to kill people at random as long as the right pronouns are used, amirite?