(Adds details on Forkner's background)
By Eric M. Johnson
SEATTLE, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Four days after leaked internal
pilot messages set off a media firestorm for Boeing Co,
former colleagues have defended a former pilot who voiced
concerns about unreported 737 MAX software problems two years
before fatal crashes.
Chief Technical Pilot Mark Forkner described in the leaked
messages how MCAS cockpit software, which has since been linked
to crashes in Indonesia in 2018 and in Ethiopia in March this
year, was "running rampant" during a flight simulator session.
The messages fuelled speculation that either Boeing or
Forkner or both knew about problems with the plane's flight
control software well before the two crashes which killed a
total of 346 people, sending its shares sharply lower.
But two former Boeing employees who either worked with
Forkner at the time he wrote the messages or had direct
knowledge of the simulator he used argued the erratic behavior
he described likely referred to the software on the flight
simulator he was using rather than evidence of risks in the
aircraft's actual MCAS flight control system.
For example, Forkner had no way of recreating the crash
scenarios - when MCAS triggered off data from a single faulty
"angle of attack" sensor - because there was "no technical way"
to shut off one of the two sensors in the simulator, said one of
the people, a former test pilot with direct knowledge of the
simulator Forkner used.
"It wasn't even something they would be looking for," he
added.
The Seattle Times earlier reported that the problems were
connected to the simulator rather than the plane itself.
Asked for comment about his former colleagues' appraisal of
the exchanges, Forkner's lawyer David Gerger said: "He would
never put himself or his friends or a passenger in a plane if he
thought it was unsafe."
A Boeing spokesman did not immediately respond to a request
for comment. Boeing had tried repeatedly to get Forkner to agree
to talk to the company before it turned the messages over to
FAA, a person briefed on the matter said.
On Sunday, Boeing said it had not been able to speak to
Forkner but that he had said through a lawyer that his comments
reflected a reaction to a simulator program, not the MAX itself.
"In my opinion, the messages are no smoking gun," said the
second former engineering colleague, Rick Ludtke.
Forkner wrote on LinkedIn that he and Ludtke worked closely
on several "high visibility projects" for the 737.
"The people who knew him and understood his role could see
that he wasn't talking about MCAS in a first-person, informed
way," Ludtke said.
The instant message chain focuses on his work as a liaison
between engineers - including those still fine-tuning MCAS in
2016 - and the technicians who calibrate the 737 MAX simulator
software to identify and fix glitches and make it feel as much
as possible like the aircraft itself.
It remains unclear whether Forkner's systems knowledge at
the time included MCAS' vulnerability to a single point of
failure and other flaws pinpointed in the crashes, and whether
he raised any concerns to engineers still developing the flight
control law.
At Boeing until 2018, Forkner was the lead technical pilot
on a team of roughly six people working mainly from desks and
inside simulators on a training and services team eventually
folded into Boeing's new Global Services division.
His group was not part of the Boeing Test and Evaluation
group, whose pilots put the 737 MAX through hundreds of hours of
test flights before the jetliner entered service, though Forkner
would occasionally join flight and certification tests as an
observer, one of the people said.
"WASN'T A LIE"
Forkner and his colleagues worked on the flight manuals
airlines now used since the 737 MAX entered service in 2017, and
fielded operations and systems questions from dozens of global
airlines operating thousands of 737 aircraft globally, the
former employees said.
The former employees also said Forkner's language gave away
that he was unaware of recent changes engineers made to the MCAS
cockpit software, which was still being fine-tuned before FAA
certification.
At another point in the conversations, Forkner says he
"basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly)", to which a
colleague responds, "it wasn't a lie, no one told us that was
the case."
The former employees said Forkner added "unknowingly"
because the information he relayed to the FAA was based on what
engineers had told him and that he appeared to be unaware of
changes to MCAS' function at low speeds until he witnessed it in
the simulator, rendering what he told the FAA incorrect.
Before Boeing, he was an Instructor Pilot in the U.S. Air
Force and First Officer at Alaska Airlines, according to
LinkedIn. He currently works as a 737 First Officer for
Southwest Airlines and did not respond to a request for comment.
The world's largest planemaker is eight months into a global
crisis over the safety ban of its 737 MAX in the wake of the
crashes.
The messages between Forkner and a colleague discussing
simulator software flaws, and another batch of Forkner's emails
related to pilot training, have emerged as crucial issues in
investigations into Boeing's development of the MAX.
The reaction to the messages was harsh and immediate, with
Democrat Peter DeFazio, the chair of a U.S. House committee
investigating Boeing, saying the "outrageous" messages suggest
"Boeing withheld damning information" from the Federal Aviation
Administration.
Boeing is making progress on getting the 737 MAX aircraft in
the air again, but the FAA will need at least several more weeks
for review, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said earlier on
Tuesday.
Boeing shares rose almost 2% on Tuesday after it put out a
lengthy statement defending its actions during the crisis.
Sam Graves, the top Republican on the House Transportation
committee, said the leaked messages amounted to "an incomplete
snapshot in time", saying they raised a number of questions.
"Most importantly, what did Boeing do with the information?"
Graves said.
(Additional reporting by David Shepardson, Tim Hepher, editing
by Deepa Babington, William Maclean)