A Boeing 737 Max test pilot has been charged with obstructing US aviation safety regulators, according to the US Department of Justice, and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Former 737 Max chief technical pilot Mark Forkner, 49, of Texas, has been charged with "deceiving the Federal Aviation Administration's Aircraft Evaluation Group" (AEG) and committing fraud by misleading Boeing's airline customers into believing the 737 Max was a safe aircraft.
"Forkner allegedly abused his position of trust by intentionally withholding critical information about MCAS during the FAA evaluation and certification of the 737 MAX and from Boeing's US-based airline customers," said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A Polite Jr of the Justice Department's Criminal Division in a statement.
The prosecutor claimed that Forkner had supplied the FAA with "materially false, inaccurate, and incomplete information" about MCAS, the Manoeuvering Characteristics Augmentation System. This, he said, was the root of the lack of documentation and understanding about MCAS which led to two fatal crashes.
In November 2016, the DoJ claims Forkner learned about an important change to MCAS and deliberately withheld that from the FAA's AEG, leading to safety approval reports not mentioning the software's presence.
Software that pilots didn't know about
MCAS is the 737 Max's controversial software-powered system responsible for the crashes of two 737 Maxes, killing 346 people. As chronicled here on The Register, MCAS was a software fix for the Max so the airliner's updated design could be "grandfathered" inside existing regulatory approvals for the elderly 737 design.
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