Is it responsible for the deaths of 346 people and the greatest crisis of confidence in civil aviation?
In the case of the Boeing 737 MAX plane crashes, a former test pilot for the American aircraft giant was officially accused of fraud by a US federal court.
Former chief technical pilot Mark Forkner provided the FAA with “incorrect, inaccurate and incomplete information about a new part of the flight control of the Boeing 737 MAX,” the US Department of Justice said on Thursday (local time).
The 737 MAX was registered in March 2017. Forkner was the direct contact between the aircraft manufacturer and the FAA. According to documents released in early 2020, he had bragged about being able to deceive his FAA colleagues in order to obtain certification for the MCAS stabilization system specially developed for the Boeing 737 MAX.
In October 2018 and March 2019, two machines of the type crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia, killing a total of 346 people. In both cases, the MCAS had submitted incorrect data. In March 2019, a worldwide flight ban was imposed on the previous bestseller from Boeing, which was only lifted at the end of 2020 after a revision of the system.
Boeing had admitted its responsibility for the crashes earlier this year and accepted a billion-dollar fine to avert criminal proceedings. The company agreed to pay a $ 2.5 billion fine and compensation.
In September, a US judge admitted another lawsuit against the company. The shareholders are suing Boeing’s board of directors for ignoring warnings regarding the MCAS safety system after the first crash.