Was Forkner not just a simulator tester and involved with Technical Publications such as VOL2? He wasn't a test pilot like the other 20 or so who actually put the Max through the test program aloft and who would have know EXACTLY how the Max behaved. The simulators during development are pretty crude representations of the real aircraft. So how can one man fairly low down the knowledge tree be held responsible? The design engineers would have had far more knowledge than Forkner too. All very strange and smells like a case of passing the buck. Not to say that what he did was good - it was not. But did this one low level guy change the course of the 737 development program?
Retd Guy