Criminal Charges Coming For MAX Chief Technical Pilot:
Boeing’s former chief technical pilot on the 737 MAX is expected to be indicted on criminal charges in the next few days. The Wall Street Journal first reported Thursday that Mark Forkner, who left Boeing about two years ago, is expected to be indicted in the next few days to face allegations that he misled FAA officials on the significance of the addition of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) to the MAX. MCAS, which adjusts the angle of the horizontal stabilizer to change the pitch of the aircraft, was installed to compensate for aerodynamic differences between the MAX and earlier generation 737s. It was designed to operate in the background without pilot input and was cited in two fatal crashes involving the MAX.
According to the Seattle Times, part of the Deferred Prosecution Agreement between Boeing and the FAA called out Forkner and his deputy chief pilot for allegedly misrepresenting the significance of the addition of the MCAS while exonerating senior brass. The Times says Forkner will likely argue that he was under intense pressure from above to convince the FAA that the MAX was so similar to the earlier 737s that minimal type training would be required, thus saving potential customers millions in training costs. In the two crashes, MCAS overpowered flight crews after getting erroneous data from angle of attack indicators and put the aircraft, one operated by Lion Air and the second by Ethiopian Airlines, into unrecoverable high-speed dives.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @09:22PM (33 children)
(Score: 1) by Brymouse on Wednesday September 22 2021, @09:48PM
rofl, this guy is going to go down for it and if the top is smart, they will pay him to do so.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday September 22 2021, @09:50PM (28 children)
Nah, they found their scapegoat now. He didn't design MCAS, he didn't decide to cheap out on it by using only one AoA sensor, he didn't decide to not give pilots an easy way to turn it off without disabling the whole electric trim system, but he will go down for all of it. Alone.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday September 22 2021, @10:13PM (15 children)
Actually that's pretty normal procedure. Aero certifications following ARP-4754 requires that someone from QA in charge of signing off on design and quality reviews, and interfacing with the FAA or EASA QA rep, be held penally responsible for what they sign on. As a matter of fact, his or her counterpart at the FAA works under similar terms.
Usually those people are very well paid and they don't take bullshit from nobody - including the top brass - because unlike everybody else, they risk landing in the pokey for years. In fact, ensuring their impartiality is precisely the point of the threat.
I've been wondering for years why nobody was indicted for the MCAS debacle - both from Boeing and from the FAA, because it would indicate the certification process has become a sham. And if there's something I trust in this world, it's the FAA or EASA certification processes. It would be very distressing if it had turned out to be untrustworthy. The Boeing guy's indictment is a very good sign that things work as normal.
That leaves me wondering why nobody at the FAA is being similarly raked over the coals. I find it very hard to believe Boeing managed to convince them that the MCAS wasn't worth digging further into and the FAA accepted that at face value. I'm curious to see how the FAA is going to get out of that one.
I'm also curious to know why the Boeing guy decided to take the risk. I wouldn't even for a million bucks and if management was waterboarding me into signing.
Anyway, the point is, there is no scapegoating and no conspiracy here. The process is working as it should and you should be glad.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @10:26PM (7 children)
So the process is to have a single scapegoat to absorb all the blame for an entire corporation?
Doesn't sound like something that punishes or discourages the company responsible for it all. Nail a fall guy, water under the bridge, raises for everyone else.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 22 2021, @10:41PM (3 children)
Sadly, yes, that's how it works. If justice were to be served, there would be a couple dozen decision makers going down with him, along with his FAA counterpart.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @07:04PM (2 children)
The question is: how do you short circuit corruption? Make 1 guy responsible, then he is a (benign) dictator. Make 10 guys responsible, then it's politics as usual. Everybody's at fault(tm), bonuses all round.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 23 2021, @10:26PM (1 child)
Have you ever experienced one of those headhunter expeditions, where outsiders come into your plant, and decide that you can save money by getting rid of people? We were going through that when the COVID hit, and the headhunters all went home, leaving their recommendations behind.
The law needs something like that. In this case, something terrible happened. The headhunters should have showed up, evaluated how things work, and apportioned blame based on their findings. I mean, no individual has the power to decide how a commercially built aircraft is built. There are hundreds of people involved at every step of the way, from concept, to basic engineering, to advanced engineering, to actual detailed designs, etc ad nauseum.
Call it a witch hunt, I don't care. The fact is hundreds upon hundreds of people share blame for killing hundreds of innocent victims on those two airliners that went down. All of those people should be hunted down, and appropriate punishment dealt out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @04:04AM
We'll make a good communist of you yet, Comrade Runaway.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday September 22 2021, @10:42PM (1 child)
In this case, yes. The QA rep is supposed to be the last line of defense against corporate shenanigans. The aero suppliers seeking to certify their products with the FAA or the EASA is required to hire someone under threat of penal sanction (sometimes decades after they left the company) and it's well understood that this person is impervious to pressure because they value their freedom more than their job. That person is also royally paid to do that job under such threat, and that too is well understood. I was a QA engineer and I was offered that job, and I can tell you it didn't take me more than 5 seconds to refuse it right here and there. You have to be supremely confident in your abilities to do that job and I sure as hell wasn't.
You could argue that corporations would behave better if the same sort of circumstances was applied to their officers: if they risked jail time personally, a lot of them would think twice before making rash decisions that hurt society or the environment, and the shareholders be damned. And there would be a real justification for their revolting salaries for a change.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @05:16AM
How they handle this:
Hire more QA people
Lay off the ones who won't play ball.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @07:01PM
I look forward to hearing about your committee-based solution.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @10:43PM (4 children)
The problem with it is that there are indications that only the draft version of MCAS was seen by Boeing's QA department (including chief pilot), not the final version that was actually flown. If they went behind the chief pilot's back then Boeing management need to face prison time for it. Hopefully details either way will come out at trial..
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RS3 on Wednesday September 22 2021, @11:37PM (3 children)
All that and I think people generally are too comfortable with automated things. People assume things are really well thought out, tested, all potential scenarios tried, tested, accommodated, etc.
Also remember this whole 737 MAX + MCAS was about saving $ in the first place, so there was extra pressure to rush it along.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday September 23 2021, @07:50PM (2 children)
Not disagreeing with most of your post. But there's a pretty strong argument this situation is anti-augmented reality not anti-automation.
The "killer mistake" is trying to trick everyone into the alternative reality of "its just like that other plane" when it unfortunately is not and treating it like the other plane results sometimes in crashes.
Its a pity because augmented reality has such hope including for safety critical applications. But just like "trust the computer" killed people in the old days, "trust the augmented reality" killed people in those planes.
The idea of "use the computer to make this thing seem like its the other thing" is not inherently fatal but it is risky and can be dangerous.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @10:55PM (1 child)
What blows me away is that MCAS was somehow not considered a safety critical system. Anything that touches flight controls, let alone something that can override the pilots, is safety critical. No exceptions. Then we get to the shoddy software that was clearly written by someone with no experience with controlling hardware, and shouldn't have passed even a cursory QA review, and something is seriously rotten in Detroit. Automation has greatly improved airline safety, but it requires thorough analysis, careful design, and strict quality control, and there has been a disturbing trend away from that over the last twenty years from Boeing. Even Airbus isn't this bad, and they pride themselves on doing it wrong.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday September 24 2021, @05:26AM
I get the idea most of us guys that did both hardware and software did so in the 60s thru the 80s.
We are old guys now, and highly disrespectful of young whippersnapper MBA types who want us to ignore the lessons experience has taught us.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday September 22 2021, @11:34PM (1 child)
I don't object that he's in hot water, I just object that he is alone in the cauldron. In this case, he should not be alone on the Boeing side and they should probably be joined by people on the FAA side as you say.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @02:31AM
Better check his family's bank accounts to make sure he isn't the fall guy.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @01:45AM (1 child)
Yup. This will go down the same as it did for James Liang, the engineer who apparently was responsible for VW emissions cheating, all on his own.
Bringing back the guillotine for powerful public officials (including cops), and rich parasite corporate executives would get their attention and this shit would stop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @07:07PM
Yes, thanks to the guillotine there is no corruption any more. Even more effective is the smart bomb and the MOAB. These sure have helped advance humanity.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @04:12AM (2 children)
This is a result of a corporate organizational structure where technically competent people are made subordinate to leadership boss types.
It's like having someone with a MBA driving a bus, as the bus driver would not be subordinate when instructed to do foolish things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @07:11PM (1 child)
Hah! And the only solution, always, is more management and more burden placed on the workers. Doing anything requires submission of all documentation and approval from 7 managers, whose main job is to have you explain everything to them so they can decide yes/no.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @05:46AM
Trouble is in getting any technically competent managers.
Just as hard as finding technically stellar engineering skills that can tolerate the leadership psychological warfare techniques doled out by MBA grads.
However, money talks, and it's only economic survival to get the MBA work of getting all the contracts signed, payments received, bonuses paid, and leadership in place before the customer becomes aware that no one knows how to do anything.
It takes years to season an engineer, but only a few hours to insert legal disclaimers into contract boilerplate.
Why spend resources for a product when it could go for bonuses for trimming expenses that won't even be apparent until after the customer takes delivery?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @05:47AM (2 children)
You're clearly ignorant in this case: He's very much involved in actively removing mention of MCAS in the documentation, including convincing FAA of that. He's also responsible for removing any mention of MCAS in the simulator. Yet the internal emails, IM's etc show that he denigrated both Lion Air and Etihadpilots, while being responsible for the training not covering MCAS.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Thursday September 23 2021, @07:57AM (1 child)
My objection isn't that he's in hot water, my objection is that he's alone in that hot water.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday September 24 2021, @11:56PM
I fully agree with you. It might be that Boeing + FAA set it up where everything funneled through the one guy. There needs to always be many people doing design review, cross-checking, full simulator tests that simulate not only full AoA sensor output range, but any possible failure modes. So I still blame Boeing mgt. _and_ FAA for being cavalier and not doing more checking.
I haven't had time to watch this, barely skimmed through, but looking forward to watching it fully. It seems to dig into the details, timeline, etc.
PBS "Frontline": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXMO0bhPhCw [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Spamalope on Thursday September 23 2021, @03:39PM (1 child)
Also cheaping out by not sanity checking the MCAS output. If it's only adjusting for the engine thrust location change, then the total input to the control surface from MCAS should be limited. But as we saw, instead it'd deflect the jack screw to the limit, putting aerodynamic loads on the controls sufficient to jam them. So let me guess, Boeing (really Douglas) outsourced the avionics programming didn't they?
A pilot in an uncommanded dive is not going to push the nose down further as a first reaction unless he's been forwarned in training. Not in a split second anyway...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @11:24PM
Outsourced to the lowest bidder with no qualifications, experience, or certification, to work in the field, then no in-house quality control ever saw it, and the FAA rubber stamped it. Just like the Dreamliner fires were due to a designed-wrong battery connector that should have been caught by anyone with five minutes of aircraft engineering training.
The diving trick was removed from the training manual years ago, the MAX has smaller manual trim wheels, and turning off MCAS also kills the power assist. Those pilots were screwed.
As for pushing down in a dive, Airbus recommends training pilots to pull up when the stall alarm goes off, so there is precedent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @05:22PM (1 child)
Exactly. the Suited Whores will walk while this guy (who should have told them to fuck off) will get the punishment. of course, if you fly in the US you are a whore too. You should have stopped flying when they started treating you like a slave after 9/11 but you have no integrity left.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @05:40PM
Driving to Europe is a bit difficult, at least with my vintage James Bond submarine car. The windows leak.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MostCynical on Wednesday September 22 2021, @09:54PM (1 child)
either he was instructed to fudge the impact of the system and the training requirements, or he felt pressured to do so..
Did he know the system could override the pilots? Did he know it could cause a crash? Did they test without the notification system that told the pilots the MCAS was doing its thing (note, this was an extra cost option, which wasn't fitted to either of the planes that crashed)?
If the answers are yes yes and no.... then he is incompetent.. but criminally?
How many people have been pressured to lie, but didn't quit? Most of the time, people don't die as a result - do we expect all test managers to be criminally liable, and if so, how much more protection do they need, to call out this stuff and not end up out of work?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday September 23 2021, @08:19PM
Well, he took a job knowing the huge pay came with criminal liability....
My guess is his specific incompetence isn't some intentional malice but a systems level misunderstanding of how it worked with historical stability augmentation. So this MCAS subroutine runs first, and the stability augmentation system and flight safety subroutines run after, so no matter how stupid the MCAS system is, the multiple safety systems after it will "clean up the mess". Whoopsie turns out the MCAS runs LAST after the fsas and flight safety systems and it can very well crash the plane if it feels like it because nothing "after" it in the process baby sits it.
I mean, fundamentally, MCAS isn't a discrete system, its a patch to flight stability augmentation. This aint the first airplane in the history of airplanes that reacts to changes to auto-trim certain things. The idea of auto-trim stuff is decades old and plenty of experience so really it should not exist as a separate management project. I get what the guy meant by wiping it out. You don't want every goddam line of code in the autopilot to have some cheezy corporate (tm) marketing slogan and separate management project policy behind it.
I have a gut level guess that the "real failure" was running MCAS as a separate project. If you gave the task as yet another line item to flight stability, they'd have implemented their "Test the hell out of it" and it would have been fixed and safe. It probably would have taken multiple extra years to deployment, but it would have been safe when it finally deployed.
Shitty SN automobile analogy time:
Imagine a corporate attempt at a remake of a "1966 Shelby Cobra" being made out of ... I donno a 2022 Ford Mustang. You know, body kit, new interior, new engine control software so it literally sounds like a Shelby, loads of baby boomer marketing. Not a bad idea, actually, hell I'd buy one and I'm not even a Boomer... Anyway corporate being corporate, some dumbass comes up with the idea of making the brakes handle like a real '66 Shelby by adding a last minute separate rule project to the car that locks the brakes under obscure conditions just like shitty 1966 technology would lock the brakes sometimes. Some other moron signs off, because "well, surely the ABS system will override this nonsense, and prevent crashes". Whoops they start crashing because it turns out the '66 Shelby brake mod actually overrides the ABS AFTER the ABS does its work, so the ABS cannot prevent crashes at all.
On one hand, it took a large team of really smart people a very long time to figure out what happened and why vs one (in retrospect) dumb bastard who thought it seemed a good idea at the time, so you can't blame the guy if it took hundreds of people, thousands of people-months of thinking, to outthink him and determine the better answer. On the other hand, welcome to engineering, that's kinda your whole job, you as an individual vs the entire natural world that's trying to kill your customers. If you don't want the responsibility of bridges crashing and killing thousands, don't go into bridge engineering. Or if you're not willing to take responsibility for planes crashing, don't go into aviation. Which unfortunately self-selects in the long run for sociopaths who probably won't be as safety focused as j.random.engineer, so ironically holding feet to the fire isn't going to make anything safer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by choose another one on Thursday September 23 2021, @10:49AM
Unlikely to drag down anyone above, (as summary says) The Deferred Prosecution Agreement (an absolute bargain, financially, for Boeing) in fact puts those above him in the clear.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @09:31PM (1 child)
Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.
Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul's Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.
Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.
High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven's joys, O bright Heaven's Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @11:42PM
A rose among the thorns of SN...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @09:56PM (5 children)
Think he deserves criminal charges for ordering horse-mounted ICE agents to whip those Haitians?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @10:02PM (3 children)
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/clarence-page/ct-column-border-haitians-homeland-secretary-mayorkas-page-20210921-mpp4s5h3lbe2zacyoxq5ouuad4-story.html [chicagotribune.com]
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @10:11PM (2 children)
Not that that's stopping the White House most of the media to spread a false story.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-homeland-security-chief-heads-border-removal-migrant-camp-accelerates-2021-09-20/ [reuters.com]
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @10:24PM (1 child)
You have to remember context. Biden's an old man and back in the day it was OK for horse-mounted police to whip Black people when they got uppity. If you wanted more modern, humane behavior you should have reelected Trump.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @10:54PM
I have the feeling that you're trying to be ironic, but...
https://newstalk1130.iheart.com/featured/common-sense-central/content/2020-08-20-joe-bidens-six-decades-of-racism/ [iheart.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @05:25PM
Jew anti-white propaganda. The Haitians should be warned to leave and then firebombed if they don't. We don't need any more Negroids here. The NGOs (non gentile organizations) bringing in the invaders need to be rounded up and shot.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @10:06PM (2 children)
I'm glad they caught the rogue who defrauded the entire Boeing Corporation and the US government single handedly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @10:09PM
--nomsg
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @10:49PM
He alone can "fix" it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @10:13PM (2 children)
This is a common way to get someone to implicate higher-ups.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @10:46PM (1 child)
It is also a common way to deflect blame from higher ups, especially when those higher ups have political connections.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @06:56AM
Executive officers of a corporation are paid outrageous sums of money because they are responsible for the company's actions. It's a heavy crown to bear. Unless the company does something judged "wrong". Then suddenly they know nothing at all. Remember, whenever someone says they "take full responsibility" for something, it means the opposite of that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @01:27PM (1 child)
If they clearly get the guy who was directly responsible to the FAA on a felony,
and they can prove that the management chain not only knew about it, but forced it to happen,
does that put the management chain in criminal jeopardy as well?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @11:40PM
Not at all, because the executives get immunity for hanging this guy out to dry.
(Score: 4, Funny) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday September 23 2021, @03:13PM
What kind of bonus is appropriate for the person that volunteers as scapegoat and saves a company billions? Asking for a friend.