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Former Boeing 737 Max Chief Technical Pilot Indicted for Fraud
- ProAm 5y agoThe US is going after aircraft employees and yet no one went to jail for the great financial meltdown/crisis in 2007/2008?
- fransje 5y agoHaha. For fraud. Nice one. Should have been for manslaughter.
- defaultprimate 5y agoRather than acknowledge and address the massive issues caused by instances of regulatory capture, such as this, or realizing the dangers that result from systemic issues with Boeing's incentive structure for management, facilitated by regulatory capture, the Federal Government and Boeing execs are just gonna scapegoat this guy. Nice. He was still incredibly stupid and made horrible choices, but the environment he was in only facilitates and encourages behavior like this.
- automatwon 5y agoI thought management’s job was about creating “culture”. Except when that culture is toxic
- defaultprimate 5y agoEverything about Boeing's culture is toxic. The company is a shit show.
- markus_zhang 5y agoWell let's hope that some C-Suite got punished.
- quasse 5y agoUnfortunately it looks like this is really a fall guy with no mention of where the instruction to hide this information came from. On the other hand, according to his Linkedin Mark Forkner worked for the FAA before moving to Boeing to become the chief technical pilot, so he should have been well aware of the stakes when he hid information.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoIt's likely he thought FAA self certification [1] would allow Boeing to skate by, which is probably accurate if the planes hadn't fallen out of the sky. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/how-the-faa-allows-jetmakers-to-self-certify-that-planes-meet-us-safety-requirements/2019/03/15/96d24d4a-46e6-11e9-90f0-0ccfeec87a61_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/how-the-faa-al...
- ineedasername 5y agoWhich is generally why in other areas a corporation may have its own verification/validation processes, but bring in a 3rd party to audit them. It's a common accounting process. Although, as we saw with Arthur Anderson, that 3rd party isn't always so neutral. And, by virtue of getting paid by the company, may deliver the results wanted instead of the results that are accurate.
- dylan604 5y agoAnother way to look at it is he would be knowledgable on how to hide information from the FAA
- weaksauce 5y agoThis is the C suite guy getting the charges levied on him with pretty solid evidence against him. if he wants to avoid long term jail they will use him to cut a deal to get more information to find out if any of the few people that are above him ordered him to do it.
- 5y ago
- dgdosen 5y agoI'm sure this guy knew what he was doing - but yes, he was probably coerced or induced by someone with more authority. There's no way the buck stops there.
- jdavis703 5y agoUnless he flips on management there’s not much for the government to go on. And then you’re asking a jury to believe the words of someone already alleged to be dishonest.
- tiahura 5y agoThis guy’s name popped up in the Seattle Times article from almost Day 1 of the MCAS debacle. IIRC he left Boeing and went to Southwest, and proceeded to lie to them about the Max. To the extent there was a single person concealing information, it was him.
- yholio 5y agoI guess him leaving explains why he's the only one to get the blame. Had he remained in the company, he could have blackmailed his way out, by threatening to bring down the whole club. By leaving, he painted a huge target on his back.
- elliekelly 5y ago> Had he remained in the company, he could have blackmailed his way out, by threatening to bring down the whole club. What? No. That’s not how it works unless your goal is a superseding indictment with additional charges.
- didntknowya 5y agowell some C-level staff eventually has to take some responsibility, can't keep passing the buck.
- ineedasername 5y ago
- slownews45 5y agoBoeing were idiots selling this new model into the markets they did right out the gate. It was greed and bit them hard. Poor maintenance. Pilot skills in hand flying and unusual flying and recovery so different (overseas they don't always come through a normal US style GA background). If they would have looked more closely at the US, they would have found that this system was triggered (and resolved) I suspect pretty frequently by US pilots - ie, the pilots in the loop compensated for the design weaknesses which was the boeing thinking historically. US pilots have played that role on many planes, usually mfg then fixes the issues as well. If they are going to continue to sell internationally in the markets they want to they actually need to think about doing more automation and flight protection stuff - more computers - not less. This may never have been the major issue it became if they had focused on a major carrier like Southwest (very experienced crews). The whole MCAS thing was garbage, interesting they are pinning it on this guy. He does say internally he lied to FAA (unknowingly) as they weren't fully familiar with MCAS modes and edge Edit: Appears I was wrong - good maintenance in US seems to have been key saving thing. "Following the recent events in Indonesia and Ethiopia, U.S. flight data was analyzed to understand whether indicators may have existed that could have been addressed, and potentially preempted the accidents. The data showed zero incidents of runaway trim on Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in the U.S. system,” says the report from the special committee. Good job A&P folks!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- evilos 5y agoThe people that really got bitten are the ones that died on impact :(
- WalterBright 5y agoThe flight previous to the LA crash also experienced the MCAS malfunction. You don't hear about that one because the crew used the electric trim switches to return trim to normal, then turned off the stab trim system with the cutoff switches. Then, they continued the flight and landed normally. The next flight on the same airplane is the one that crashed. The crew restored normal trim with the electric trim switches 25 times, but never shut off the trim system. The EA crew also restored normal trim with the trim switches, but then turned off the trim when the stabilizer was too far nose down. This is contrary to the instructions in the Boeing Emergency Airworthiness Directive distributed to all MAX pilots. This does not absolve Boeing's role in not doing a proper failure analysis of the MCAS system. But contrary to what Frontline said "the pilots did everything right" it was recoverable if the instructions for runaway trim were followed.
- Someone1234 5y agoHere are the HN threads from both crashes: Oct 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18324997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18324997 March 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19351835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19351835 May be interesting to read with the benefit of hindsight and everything we've learned about the process that lead to those crashes.
- Sebb767 5y agoIt's really fascinating how the first thread barely has any mentions of technical difficulty, while in the second thread nearly no one blames the pilots anymore. Benefit of hindsight, really. Still, it's important to remember that Boeing and the FDA dragged their feet for ages before grounding the plane after the second crash. So that's at least part of why they get so much flac in the second thread.
- civilized 5y agoNailed for being the only guy stupid enough to write instant messages bragging about misleading the FAA. As a longtime corporate grunt, I can guess exactly how management leaned on him. He should have left and let the scumbags find another patsy to do their dirty work.
- steveBK123 5y agoExactly. There's a reason when you deal with people senior enough in any big organization that everything is verbal...
- newsclues 5y agoAnd there is a reason why lawyers exist.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoI do not know if these discussions happened in WA, but WA had one party consent audio recording laws instead of all party consent, then executives would be more wary of instructing underlings to do something illegal.
- steveBK123 5y agosure but thats like 1 in 1000 but putting stuff in text/IM/email is instantly discovered if anything ever goes to trial and there is electronic discovery
- cptskippy 5y agoUnless your corporate retention policy is only 6 months. I setup an archive to keep important emails around only to find out our retention policy had been applied to it. Once an org gets burned by discovery in a lawsuit they go to great lengths to ensure it will never happen again.
- ttyprintk 5y ago
- matchedLoad 5y agohttps://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/boeings-fatal-flaw/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/boeings-fatal-flaw/
- WalterBright 5y ago"Aviation Disasters" did a much better episode on it than Frontline.
- buildsjets 5y agoThe Frontline episode on PBS is 50% teary-eyed emotional testimonials from the victim’s families, interspersed with 25% stock footage and 25% poorly summarized, and in many cases technically incorrect explanation. The Smithsonian Channel Episode “Ten Steps to Disaster” is far more technically accurate, and also deep dives the technical, business, and regulatory decisions that lead to the disaster. https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/video/series/ten-steps-to-disaster/73562 https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/video/series/ten-steps-to...
- WalterBright 5y agoThanks for the reference. I'll look at it later. I was pretty disillusioned by Frontline. I always knew they were biased, but thought they made an honest attempt to present the facts. No more.
- headco 5y agoJohn Chidgey has an excellent episode of Causality covering the technicals in great detail. https://engineered.network/causality/episode-33-737-max/ https://engineered.network/causality/episode-33-737-max/
- cher14 5y agoAn interesting part in the documentary specifically about the role of the test pilot indicted starts at 26:40
- broknbottle 5y agoI knew this whole Boeing disaster was the work a rogue chief technical pilot.
- civilized 5y agoThey must be stopped!
- CivBase 5y agoHow unfortunate the certification process for a safety-critical system simply has to be designed such that one bad actor can cause so much damage. And I'm sure he was motivated purely by spite for the FAA and potential 737 MAX passengers - not at all by management that prioritizes speed and cost reduction above all else. What a terrible, very bad individual. Oh well. At least we know that nobody else at all in Boeing was responsible in the slightest. Everyone else involved with the program were probably angels and this one bad bad man pulled the wool over their eyes. So sad. At least they caught the only bad man before he could strike again. Did I mention he's solely responsible for this whole thing yet? It really was unfortunate, but these things just happen you know? I guess we just better cross our fingers and hope real hard that it doesn't happen again. There's nothing more to learn from this.
- m0zg 5y agoFWIW, I thought they'd indict the unpaid intern in janitorial department. That's how such things usually go.
- pdonis 5y agoWhile I don't have any sympathy for this pilot, I also find the FAA's excuses here to be less than convincing. Basically, their position is "Well, we trusted this Boeing employee to tell us the truth about the new flight controls, and he didn't." But if the regulators had actually done their job and independently evaluated the new flight controls, they wouldn't have had to take the word of any Boeing employees. I realize that that's the way the FAA does things now, but this whole debacle should be a warning to everyone that that method of regulation is not acceptable. The whole point of independent regulation is to not allow obvious conflicts of interest to harm the public.
- larrydag 5y agoAlso this feels a lot like Boeing offering up a sacrificial lamb. I find it hard to believe that the FAA can focus on one person at Boeing as the reason for the failure in reporting the issue. There are too many managers and engineers involved. On the surface this sounds a lot like the Challenger disaster story.
- HPsquared 5y agoOverall though, I'm at least happy some individuals are getting prosecuted, it sends a message that there are legal risks to individuals involved in this kind of thing, not just diluted corporate responsibility.
- trebligdivad 5y agoOnly if the people actually responsible get prosecuted; prosecuting the wrong person sneds the message that the people really responsible get away with it - so there is need for some care.
- wongarsu 5y agoEven prosecuting the wrong people at least encourages whistle blowing. If someone thinks they might be the sacrificial lamb if excrement hits the fan they can protect themselves by being the first to report it to regulators
- elisbce 5y agoThis is so much bigger than just a rogue guy. So basically this is saying that the FAA just makes judgement and decisions based on documents and information coming from a chief pilot, without verifying or inspecting the codebase. This whole FAA process is flawed to the core.
- PedroBatista 5y agoAt the end of the day we need some dummy to be hanged at the town square. So we can all lie to ourselves justice was served and everything works as should. There are entire generations of people inside that company that should at least sit their asses in court.
- throw7 5y ago"Ohhh, those Chief Technical Pilots! God Bless'em!" - C-suite.
- ameminator 5y agoVery dissatisfactory result - the buck should not have stopped with only him. This failure was on multiple people, from both Boeing and the FAA. The FAA was grossly negligent and has proven itself unreliable by this whole debacle. A national embarrassment.
- mberning 5y agoMan he is taking one for the team. Hopefully there will be more indictments. I highly doubt there is a singular guilty party on this one.
- bmitc 5y agoAlways seems like some person in the middle of these companies and regulators that always gets hit and not someone deeper in the companies or regulators. Not denying or affirming this person’s role, but it seems to be a pattern, whether it’s financial institutions, corporations, defense contractors, etc. and their associated regulatory bodies.
- rajrkrish 5y agoThere is a term for it - Scapegoating.
- icecube123 5y agoOr CYA. Management is experts at "Covering Your Ass".
- e9 5y agoIf you dig deeper he was clearly aware of the issue and chose to cut corners even though he was of course pressured, read his email on page 3: https://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Compressed%20Updated%202020.01.09%20Boeing%20Production.pdf https://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Compressed%20...
- dhx 5y agoInternal Boeing e-mails between various Chief Technical Pilots and other Boeing staff are available at [1]. It shows that there was an overarching requirement for the program to to ensure that 737 pilots could fly the 737 MAX with minimal "Level B" training (e.g. no need for hours of simulator training). Per [2], MCAS was poorly designed and exhibited a failure mode (e.g. AOA sensor failure) that required immediate pilot action to avert disaster. For pilots that were aware of the MCAS failure mode and how to respond, simulation showed they could respond and avert disaster within typically 4 seconds. A delay of 10 seconds from a pilot to respond correctly to the failure event would be catastrophic. A Boeing staffer wrote to the Chief Technical Pilot now indicted[^][1] regarding the pilot action required in those critical few seconds: "I fear that skill is not very intuitive any more with the younger pilots and those who have become too reliant on automation" The Chief Technical Pilot now indicted[^] responds: "This is the path with least risk to Level B. We need to sell this as very intuitive basic pilot skill". Boeing it appears then opted for updating Non-Normal Checklists (NNCs) for pilots instead of: * Fixing the MCAS flaw to remove the failure mode altogether * Ensuring pilots were trained to handle an MCAS failure in a simulator * Otherwise ensuring that pilots were aware of the non-intuitive nature of MCAS and the particular failure mode requiring immediate <10sec response from pilots If the failure mode with MCAS did occur, pilots didn't even have 10 seconds to find the NNC and go through the checklist steps before catastrophe was set to occur. They were not aware of MCAS being present on the aircraft and per the Boeing staffer raising the concern, "that skill is not very intuitive" in relation to acting on the failure mode should it have occurred. [1] https://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Compressed%20Updated%202020.01.09%20Boeing%20Production.pdf https://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Compressed%20... [2] https://www.incose.org/docs/default-source/enchantment/210310-carson-perspectives-on-the-737max.pdf?sfvrsn=222798c6_2 https://www.incose.org/docs/default-source/enchantment/21031... [^] Assumed from job titles in the e-mails, as names are redacted.
- jetrink 5y agoOne note: 'Yours truly' is typically used to refer to oneself, so it seems that you are claiming to be the indicted pilot.
- 5y ago
- anonygler 5y agoWow. They didn’t go after an executive? Just a pilot? So blatantly corrupt.
- thuccess129 5y agoU.S. Justice's price for get out of jail card for all the executives except the designated fallguy CTP is $2.5B.
- dsq 5y agoIt is important to note that Boeing settled for 2.5 billion in which it is agreed that "...the misconduct by its former employees was “neither pervasive across the organization, nor undertaken by a large number of employees, nor facilitated by senior management". (https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-reaches-2-5-billion-settlement-of-u-s-probe-into-737-max-crashes-11610054729 https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-reaches-2-5-billion-sett...). So remember, when push comes to shove, the technical lead always gets thrown to the wolves while management goes "we don't know about that technical stuff". Not to detract in any way from what he is culpable for.
- soylentnewsorg 5y agoI took a gig at a hospital. They got an MBA Karen with 3 years of experience. She learned the very basics of IT, then started micromanaging. As in, she'd tell you what switches to put on CLI commands. If you said that's wrong, or would cause data corruption - you're not a team player. The entire team of 18 people were not team players - the team consisted of her alone. One time, she told me to do something very dangerous during a data migration. Not a best practice, and a big no-no. I'm seeing open files randomly spread across about 50 NAS shares which should according to her be offline - retired apps. It would take time to identify those, notify people, etc. She has deadlines to meet. You see, this migration that's been put off time and again for 2 years, needs to be finished in about a month, because when she was hired, she made that promise to her boss - without knowing anything about the apps, how much data, what users, etc. I talked to her over chat, saved the chat, warned her about all the dangers and was told to proceed. It brought down a clinic, resulted in some data loss, and affected patients. Next migration batch, she asks me to do it again. With a phone call. I ask for it in writing, she refuses. I added the phone call notes to the servicenow change control ticket, put risk as high, and said I need a note in the ticket from her telling me to proceed despite risk. A week later I'm on suspension for disobeying my manager. HR tells me they will be getting in touch with me to get the details of what happened. I enjoy my paid week off while HR investigates the complaint - they need a full week because they review so much. at 4pm, the day before the week is over, the HR rep calls me and asks be about what happened. At 9am the next day I'm fired. I file for unemployment and get a corp to corp contract to a company I'm part owner in (contract to the company, not to me). They dispute it, saying I was fired for my attitude, and was written up many times. Both false - I turn over the details - saved chats, emails, a phone call I recorded, etc to the UI officer. The next day my unemployment is approved, and I'm collecting unemployment weekly, while collecting dividends from the company I own for its c2c contract. I do however reply to one email per day from an indian recruiter - I pick ones with names I can't pronounce. They do the needful and submit me to one position per day with "their client." Why only indian recruiters? Because they are a minority and I don't discriminate. This is a Boeing engineer being thrown under the bus by management. Here's what needs to happen: the engineer is guilty. I was guilty too when the first time I ran the destructive script, despite being told to do that in writing. The engineer is like a nazi soldier. Both the soldier, and his boss, and anyone up the chain who approved or pushed for this, need to be on the receiving side of that courtroom.
- tibbydudeza 5y agoFAA outsourced it responsibility to Boeing - basically just a rubberstamp - no wonder the European and Chinese air safety folks wanted to do their own testing. Never happened before as the FAA used to be the gold standard for safety - looks they have been gutted by the govt.
- Goety 5y agoIs it possible to tamper with MACS remotely?
- agent327 5y ago...one man? Out of the whole company, the massive number of people that must have been involved, only one man gets the blame? And not even an executive at that?
- supportlocal4h 5y agoIt is human nature to detest regulation in general but insist upon it after the fact of some failure. This can be easily illustrated with automobile speed limits. Almost everyone would be outraged if they were ticketed for driving 2 k/mph over the posted limit. It is a widely held belief that drivers traveling at or just below the maximum limit pose a safety risk because they are too slow. An officer who rigorously enforced posted speed limits would get run out of town. But who's to blame when the officer looks the other way and it results in a crash?
- verytrivial 5y agoYou cite human nature, but I disagree with most if not ALL of what you are saying here. Driving at or just below the speed limit is what the law requires. If the speed limit is wrong, you lobby to get the limit changed or start raising $$ from fines until people get the idea. What you DON'T do is let speed limits become optional else people running over kids near schools will feel like they were morally justified in doing so, because 'Who pays attention to those signs, right?' You are describing exactly the normalisation of deviance that gets people killed per the 737 Max situation. The Officer in your example is secondarily at fault, the driver is primarily at fault, but the CULTURE that allows these dangerous situations to arise is where the problem needs to be addressed. "Yes, I was speeding/falsifying records, Officer. But everyone else was doing it."
- willcipriano 5y ago"They expect one of us in the wreckage brother"
- AllThatJazz 5y agoEarlier this year, the feds signed an agreement that let Boeing executives off the hook for the 737 MAX catastrophes, which killed 346 people. The lead prosecutor, Erin Nealy Cox, then took a job with the firm that leads Boeing's criminal defense.
- jeffrallen 5y agoThe real scandal is what's legal...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- diebeforei485 5y agoWhat sort of role is "Chief Technical Pilot"? I feel like they should be going after Boeing Co and not after individuals, except individuals at the top of the scheme.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- therealbilly 5y agoI don't know. This has sort of a scapegoat feel to it
- dng88 5y agoSeems like to be management and sales issue become a ... technical issue and get the guy blamed. In the technical field ... I have sympathy for that guy. It is not his decision to hide the device and not trained pilot about the new device.