A software of the aircraft played a central role in two crashes with 346 deaths. The chief test pilot is accused of having detected errors in the flight simulator but not reported them.
In the course of the investigation into the breakdown plane Boeing 737 Max the former chief test pilot of the machine has been charged. He is accused of having provided US authorities with incorrect and incomplete information about the assistance system, which played a central role in two crashes of the plane. Therefore, airlines and their pilots were not informed about the functionality of the software, according to the indictment published on Thursday.
The system, named MCAS, was intended to be used by the pilots of the 737 max help to keep the aircraft in the correct position. It became necessary because the machine was a modified version of the 737 is from the 1960s. the Max got bigger engines, so in some cases the nose of the aircraft could go up. The software should then take countermeasures and make slight corrections. But as it turned out, MCAS could intervene in other situations and steer the machine downwards. In the two crashes in Indonesia in 2018 and in Ethiopia in 2019, pilots were not prepared for it.
346 people were killed in the accidents. the 737 max had been banned from flying for 20 months during the investigation. The crisis cost Boeing billions. Investigations against the company itself had been settled with a $ 2.5 billion settlement at the end of President Donald Trump’s tenure.
Boeing originally told the FAA that MCAS should only intervene in a rare situation – when the aircraft is making sharp turns at high speed. But in November 2016, chief test pilot Mark Forkner found in the flight simulator that the system was active even at a significantly lower flight speed. “So I lied to the regulators (unknowingly),” Forkner then wrote to a colleague in the company’s internal chat. This exchange had been known since Boeing published it in 2019.
Since then, Forkner has been in the sights of the investigators. In the indictment, he is now accused of having verified that the system works at lower speeds after the surprise during the simulator flight with a colleague, and that he kept this from the regulators. The consequence was that MCAS was not in the documentation for the training of pilots for the MaxVersion had been mentioned, the prosecutors emphasized. The FAA only became aware of the system after the crashes.
There was initially no reaction to the indictment from the ex-test pilot or his lawyers. In response to earlier criticism after the chats were published, they had emphasized that Forkner had never knowingly put passengers and crew members at risk.