Accidents
Former Boeing Pilot Indicted for Fraud in 737 Max Case
The U.S. Justice Department has charged former Boeing chief technical pilot Mark Forkner with six counts of fraud.
A Lion Air Boeing 737 Max 8 sits in storage in Moses Lake, Washington, in October 2019. (Photo: Barry Ambrose)
A Lion Air Boeing 737 Max 8 sits in storage in Moses Lake, Washington, in October 2019. (Photo: Barry Ambrose)

A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Texas returned an indictment late Thursday charging former Boeing chief technical pilot Mark Forkner with deceiving the FAA during the agency’s evaluation and certification of the Boeing 737 Max. Forkner, 49, allegedly deceived the FAA’s Aircraft Evaluation Group (AEG) by providing the agency with “materially false, inaccurate, and incomplete information” about the Max’s maneuvering characteristics augmentation system (MCAS), leading to the omission of any reference to the flight control software in training manuals.