Forkner described how he persuaded Lion Air officials who wanted to train their pilots on MAX simulators to drop the idea, telling them this was
a difficult and unnecessary training burden for your airline.Forkner in private messages then mocked the Lion Air representatives for their “stupidity” in asking for such training, and boasted that his efforts to dissuade them had saved Boeing
a sick amount of $$$$.Lion Air Flight JT610 was the first MAX to crash in October 2018, killing 189 people.
In a 2014 email, Forkner wrote that avoiding the need for full flight simulator pilot training, which would cost the airlines a lot of money, was a key imperative from the leadership of the MAX program.
The prosecution agreement, criticized for the way it let Boeing executives off the hook, was filed by the then-U.S. Attorney in the northern district of Texas, Erin Nealy Cox.
Cox left the Department of Justice after the agreement and in June joined Kirkland & Ellis, Boeing’s lead corporate criminal defense law firm. On Kirkland’s website, she was welcomed to the firm as a partner by Mark Filip, who had signed the DPA on behalf of Boeing.
Dominic Gates
Some follow-up news about the Boeing 737 Max crashes and subsequent investigation. While it looks like Mark Forkner has played a major part covering up the flaws, it also seems obvious that his management encouraged this course of action to increase profits. And that the American justice system, just as the political system, is rife with corruption, ineffective against people with money and power – as it was and continues to be against Donald Trump.
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