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Comment by dgdosen | Hacker News Reader

I'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.

He definitely knew what he was doing and yea he was pressured, read his email on page 3: https://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Compressed%20...

"he was probably coerced or induced by someone with more authority"

Then he should flip. Naming names will at least buy some sympathy points.

How? If there's no evidence of a conversation, it won't help his case.

It does point some heat at the named person, and maybe drags their name through the mud.

No one is going to give immunity or spare someone from prosecution if that have that person nailed hardcore, and the only evidence they have against the ‘mastermind’ is he said/she said that isn’t going to go anywhere in court.

It's not that simple.

Sincere cooperation has value and is weighted by authorities, regardless of where it does or does not lead. Years served are based on such factors.

Also, there are the civil suits. Standards of evidence are generally lower and a credible and cooperative peon has value to plaintiffs as they pursue the big targets.

How do the authorities distinguish sincere cooperation from fabricated deflection, in the absence of evidence?

I’m guessing it creates more probable cause for subpoenas and leverage in interviews and hopefully they find more evidence … or not.

Often it's as simple minded as convincing the judge that decides how many years you'll serve that you're not irredeemable.

This 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.

I 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.

> 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.

Unless 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.

well some C-level staff eventually has to take some responsibility, can't keep passing the buck.

some C-level staff eventually has to take some responsibility

That may be optimistic. Off the top of my head I can't remember any c-level execs of such a massive corporation having criminal charges brought against them. (except maybe for some type of tax/securities fraud) There's probably... some? My knowledge of the area certainly isn't comprehensive.

Not C-level - but at Boeing, and convicted of a felony in the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darleen_Druyun

What happened to the Enron guys? Didn't they go to jail? I know one commited suicide, but the othe 2 spent some time at Club Fed didn't they?

Ken Lay (Chairman, CEO) had a heart attack and died, not suicide. Jeffrey Skilling (CEO) was initially sentenced to 24 years, later reduced to 14, served 12. Andrew Fastow (CFO) was sentenced to 6 years, served 5.

Thanks for the correction.

Volkswagon

He is c-level. He’s the _Chief_ Technical Pilot.

Naw, that's just an honorary title. ;-) He could have gone higher to Master Chief.

"Chief Technical Pilot" is not a role listed amongst the dozens of executive council roles and vice president roles at Boeing[1].

What about the following executive roles listed at [1]:

* Chief Aerospace Safety Officer

* Chief Compliance Officer

* Chief Engineer

* Vice President, Total Quality, Boeing Commercial Airplanes

* Vice President and Chief Engineer, Boeing Commercial Airplanes

* Vice President, Manufacturing and Safety

Are there more indictments on the way? It doesn't sound plausible that a "Chief Technical Pilot" at Boeing should be ultimately responsible for signing off engineering designs for MCAS, signing off on the System Safety Analysis for MCAS, signing off on manuals to be provided to pilots that omitted MCAS, signing off on training materials that omitted MCAS, ensuring quality assurance across all of the above, signing off on verification and validation of MCAS, etc. There is a large team of people signing off on these processes and documents. Per [2], "The chief pilot is among the leaders who must concur that an airplane is flightworthy before the company proceeds with a flight."

If I'm wrong and the chief pilot for an aircraft class is indeed ultimately responsible for its design, engineering, testing, training, certification and everything else, why is this situation possible? Is there no independent quality assurance and auditing?

[1] https://www.boeing.com/company/bios/

[2] https://www.boeing.com/commercial/737max/737-max-pilots-role...

The Chief Project Engineer is the person who is ultimately responsible for the design, engineering, testing, setting training requirements, certification, and everything else. The CPE for the 737 MAX was Michael Teal. There’s only room for one signature on the FAA application for an ammended type certificate, and it was his.

Forkner was not the Chief Pilot. He was the the Chief Technical Pilot, who is the person responsible for developing new training information for changed systems, getting it certified by the FAA, and coordinating with airlines to deploy it to their pilots. Therefore Forkner was responsible for:

Signing off on manuals to be provided to pilots that omitted MCAS. Signing off on training materials that omitted MCAS. Signing on on the verification and validation that MCAS was correctly represented in the flight simulators.

The Boeing program wanted Level B training only[1] which excludes flight simulator training, hence Forkner was trying to achieve that requirement by avoiding the need for pilots to undergo simulator training.

Even if you were to remove Forkner entirely from the decision making process, pilots would have been asked to fly an aircraft with a 'catastrophic' hazard only reduced to 'hazardous' by training pilots to respond to a very rare event within ~4 seconds of a failure event that the pilots weren't even notified of because the AoA sensor disagreement warning feature was an optional paid addon[2]. If a pilot were to take 10 seconds to respond... too late, the aircraft would likely have been lost[3].

Even with the best training in the world, is it reasonable to just expect pilots, within seconds, to be able to work around 100's of crap engineering and human machine interaction design decisions? As [3] notes, the lack of consideration of the pilot (as a human not a robot or computer) in the engineering design of the aircraft is glaring. Corporate Boeing wanted an aircraft that pilots didn't need to be retrained in, and thanks to unrealistic schedule expectations, they seemingly also didn't want to spend the time needed to remove all the HMI pain points that are inflicted on pilots.

[1] https://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Compressed%20...

[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/30/politics/boeing-sensor-73...

[3] https://www.incose.org/docs/default-source/enchantment/21031...

You’re generally not going to make it to C level at a Corp that size if you aren’t good at covering your ass.

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