Ex-Boeing Pilot Heads to Court Over 737 MAX Charges

Mr. Forkner, whose trial will take place in Fort Worth, Texas, faces four counts of wire fraud that each carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Accident investigators blamed a flight-control system known as MCAS—which Mr. Forkner briefed regulators about during the plane’s development—for sending two 737 MAX jets into fatal nosedives in 2018 and 2019. The crashes claimed 346 lives and prompted a nearly two-year grounding of all 737 MAX planes, disrupting the global aviation industry.

Mr. Forkner is accused of misleading the Federal Aviation Administration about MCAS to reduce how much training pilots would need to fly it, thus making the jet more attractive to airlines.

What Mr. Forkner told FAA training specialists about MCAS, as well as what other Boeing engineers told their agency counterparts, are likely to be the subject of critical testimony. In a settlement with the Justice Department, Boeing last year agreed to pay $2.5 billion to resolve charges that its employees misled the FAA. The deal included a $244 million fine as well as almost $2.3 billion in compensation to airline customers and families of the crash victims.

The case echoes an earlier prosecution of several BP PLC staff involved in the 2010 blowout on the company’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 workers and caused the largest oil spill off the U.S. Gulf Coast. Two former BP employees were acquitted in 2016; the government secured three guilty pleas to misdemeanors. One of those acquitted was represented by David Gerger, a Houston attorney who now represents Mr. Forkner.

Mr. Gerger declined to comment, as did the Justice Department, FAA and Boeing.

Boeing admitted in its settlement with the Justice Department that former employees deceived the FAA. The deal blamed two employees, although only Mr. Forkner was charged, and said senior management wasn’t involved in the misconduct.

Boeing initially designed the 737 MAX’s MCAS system to activate during certain high-speed flying conditions that pilots would rarely encounter. But during the aircraft’s development, company engineers expanded the system’s authority to push down the plane’s nose in certain low-speed conditions, too.

Mr. Forkner is accused by prosecutors of becoming aware of the change in November 2016 during a simulated test flight and not disclosing what he learned to FAA officials who would decide how much training airline pilots needed to fly the 737 MAX. Upon learning of the change, he wrote to a colleague: “So I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly),” according to the indictment.

The training classification, which might have changed if the FAA knew more about the MCAS system, carried financial consequences for Boeing and its airline customers. If the FAA required 737 pilots to undergo simulator training for the new MAX models, it could prove costly to airlines and potentially hurt demand for the new jet.

Mr. Gerger has said Mr. Forkner always acted honestly in his dealings with the FAA. The defense attorney has said Mr. Forkner didn’t lie and was referring to a flight simulator not working properly.

Prosecutors allege that Mr. Forkner misled the FAA, which had the effect of defrauding Boeing’s airline customers. The carriers were deprived of information about the jet that may have influenced their decision to buy the 737 MAX, according to the indictment.

“It’ll be very difficult for the defense to paint Mr. Forkner as some peripheral player or as the scapegoat or fall guy in an otherwise grand scheme to mislead the FAA because he did play a central role in the certification,” said Kenneth Quinn, a former FAA chief counsel who has represented clients in criminal probes arising from air crashes and is now a partner at Clyde & Co in Washington, D.C.

Among the witnesses that prosecutors plan to call, according to court records, are an FAA training official, Stacey Klein, who is expected to testify about what Mr. Forkner told her about MCAS, and David Loffing, a senior Boeing engineer who interacted with Mr. Forkner about the 737 MAX.

Mr. Forkner’s lawyers plan to rebut claims that he deceived Ms. Klein by showing the FAA knew how MCAS worked, while Ms. Klein had access to information about how the system operated, according to a February court filing.

Defense lawyers plan to potentially call their own FAA witnesses, including an official who sent a presentation to the Justice Department saying Mr. Forkner is a scapegoat and not responsible for Boeing’s engineering errors in MCAS’s design, according to court records. Regulators later mandated that Boeing add safeguards to the flight-control system before the 737 MAX could again carry passengers.

Prosecutors recently asked U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor to prohibit mention of the crashes during the trial, arguing the case is about the allegation that Mr. Forkner misled the FAA and defrauded two airline customers.

Mr. Forkner has said the crashes are relevant to his claim that he is the fall guy for a broader failure. Judge O’Connor ruled this week that Mr. Forkner could argue he is a scapegoat for the crashes.

“The government recognizes the very significant risk that a jury will see this as an attempt to scapegoat a low- or middle-level employee for something that jurors will see as a corporate failure,” said Sean Hecker, a defense attorney at Kaplan, Hecker & Fink LLP who isn’t involved in the trial. “And it seems like the government strategy is to try to take that away from the defense by making the case very narrow and almost devoid of context.”

Write to Dave Michaels at [email protected] and Andrew Tangel at [email protected]