Boeing engineer says safety concerns are being ignored by plane maker

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A Boeing whistleblower testified before a U.S. Senate committee that the plane maker “absolutely” has a culture of retaliating against employees who raise safety concerns.

Sam Salehpour, a quality engineer at the company, said he was reprimanded by a manager in response to repeated questions about the safety of the 777 and 787 planes. Separately, he said he found a nail suspiciously stuck in the tire of his car.

“I have raised these issues over a three-year period,” he told the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Wednesday at a hearing to examine Boeing’s safety culture. “I was ignored; I was told not to cause delays; I was told, frankly, to shut up.

Salehpour was invited to testify before Congress after going public last week with concerns that the 787 could suffer damage over years of use that could cause the wide-body jet to break down. The US Federal Aviation Administration is investigating his claims.

“There is a culture where when you address quality issues . . . you get threatened,” Salehpour said. “All I’m trying to say is that the system needs to be changed.”

Boeing did not immediately have a response to his comments at Wednesday’s hearing. It has previously said retaliation is “strictly prohibited” at the company and said the 787 showed no signs of fatigue during testing.

The plane maker is dealing with the aftermath of a crash on a Boeing 737 Max in January, when a door panel blew off during flight. The FAA and the US Department of Justice have launched investigations.

A preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board found that the door panel was missing four bolts intended to secure it to the fuselage, and an FAA audit found “multiple instances” in which Boeing failed to meet manufacturing and quality control requirements.

Boeing has a company-wide problem with employees who fear retaliation for speaking out, testified Javier de Luis, an aerospace engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was part of a panel that released a report in February in which he criticized Boeing’s safety culture.

De Luis’ sister was a United Nations interpreter who was killed in a 2019 crash of a 737 Max operated by Ethiopian Airlines, caused by a design flaw in the plane.

Boeing employees “feel that safety is our No. 1 priority, but what they see is that that’s only true as long as production milestones are met,” De Luis testified at a separate hearing held by the Commerce Committee, the United States Senate Science and Transportation. “At that point, push him out the door as fast as you can.”

Boeing management tells employees to speak up, but those who do “get very little feedback,” he said. “If they persist, they could find themselves on the short end of the stick the next time raises, bonuses or job transfers come along, or worse.”

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