U.S. lawmaker blames Boeing leaders for culture that led to crashes WASHINGTON Reuters - A senior U.S. House Democrat who oversaw a massive investigation into the Boeing 737 MAX said on Friday that the indictment of a former chief technical pilot should not be the end of accountability in the two fatal crashes which killed 346 people.
Senior leaders from Boeing are responsible for the culture of concealment that ultimately led to the 737 MAX crashes and the death of 346 innocent people, said Representative Peter DeFazio, who chairs Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Mark Forkner, 49, was set to be indicted on six counts of conspiring to defraud the U.S. air customers of Boeing to obtain tens of millions of dollars for the plane maker by a grand jury in Texas.
DeFazio s indictment should not be the end of accountability for this horrific failure, Mark Forkner said.
Boeing did not immediately comment. A lawyer for Forkner did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Congress approved legislation to improve how the Federal Aviation Administration certifies new airplanes and DeFazio said the agency must work urgently to implement bipartisan legislation. September 2020 report said the MAX crashes were the grossly inadequate culmination of a series of technical assumptions by Boeing engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing s management and faulty oversight by the FAA. The 737 MAX was grounded by Ethiopian Airlines in March 2019 after the crash of flight 302 which killed all 157 passengers.
The Lawyer representing families of relatives killed in the Ethiopian crash said the Indictment is a corporate whitewash. This inexcusable type of corporate greed goes beyond Forkner at the company that haphazardly made these aircraft to increase profits. In January Boeing agreed to pay more than $2.5 billion of fines and damages after escorting a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department over the MAX crashes that cost Boeing more than $20 billion