Trial date for former Boeing chief technical pilot accused of fraud moved to December

The trial for Mark Forkner, a former Boeing chief technical pilot accused of fraud, has been moved to Dec. 15 in Fort Worth.

The original trial date was set for a month earlier on Nov. 15.

Forkner is accused of withholding information from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Aircraft Evaluation Group regarding the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System on Boeing 737 MAX airplanes during the certification process for the planes.

In a report published July 2017, the FAA did not include information about the new augmentation system, and pilots flying the Boeing 737 MAX airplanes were not notified of the system in their manuals, federal authorities said. After the report was published, two Boeing 737 MAX airplanes crashed: Lion Air Flight 610 near Jakarta, Indonesia, in October 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 near Ejere, Ethiopia, in March 2019. The crashes killed 346 people.

During Forkner’s first court appearance in Fort Worth on Oct. 15, the Keller resident pleaded not guilty to fraud charges. His attorney said Forkner was being used as a scapegoat for the crashes and asked for former employees of Boeing and the FAA to come forward with the truth.

If convicted, Forkner could face up to 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud and 10 years in prison for each count of fraud involving aircraft parts in interstate commerce. He is the only person to be charged in connection with the case.