'I Was Ignored, Told Not to Create Delays, and Frankly, to Shut Up.' - Boeing Whistleblower's Shocking Testimony
A Boeing engineer-turned-whistleblower told U.S. senators this week that the company’s aircraft are dangerous and that when he raised concerns about them, he was told to “shut up.”
Company engineer Sam Salehpour made headlines last week when he explained to The New York Times that he had previously expressed serious concerns about Boeing’s 787 Dreamliners.
The company denied claims from Salehpour that when he raised concerns about the structural integrity of the planes, he was removed from the project.
While testifying at a Senate subcommittee hearing on the matter Wednesday in Washington, he doubled down when he said the situation could prove deadly.
Salehpour said the company is “putting out defective airplanes,” CNN reported.
“I have serious concerns about the safety of the 787 and 777 aircraft, and I’m willing to take on professional risk to talk about them,” Salehpour said to open his testimony.
He told the Times last week that the fuselages of the Dreamliner are manufactured in separate portions and by different companies.
When they are fused together, he said, individual pieces did not always fit together within the company’s standards of five-thousandths of an inch, per CNN.
Boeing countered by noting that such a measurement is roughly that of a human hair and that its standards are on the conservative end of safety.
Salehpour said Wednesday, “When operating at 35,000 feet, the size of a human hair can be a matter of life and death.”
The whistleblower added that he had seen employees jumping on different pieces of fuselage portions in order to make them fit snugly.
“I was ignored. I was told not to create delays. I was told, frankly, to shut up,” Salehpour said of when he raised the issue with his superiors.
“I have a very negative attitude toward the safety culture,” Salehpour later told lawmakers. “When I bring something to my boss, he prevents me from even documenting or sending information. When a quality manager says don’t send to a subject matter to an expert … that’s concerning.”
No Boeing representatives were present Wednesday, but the company issued a statement about Salehpour’s claims.
“Under FAA oversight, we have painstakingly inspected and reworked airplanes and improved production quality to meet exacting standards that are measured in the one-hundredths of an inch,” the company said, according to CNN.
“We are fully confident in the safety and durability of the 787 Dreamliner. We are fully confident in the safety of the 777, which remains the most successful widebody airplane family in aviation history.”
Boeing said that in 13 years of service, the Dreamliner had safely carried more than 850 million passengers. Also, per Boeing, its 777 fleet had safely carried nearly 4 billion passengers.
Boeing planes have experienced issue after issue this calendar year, beginning in January when a 737 Max operated by Alaska Airlines lost a door plug mid-flight.
Other issues have seen flights disrupted by everything from lost landing gear to engine fires. None of those issues has cost any lives – yet.
Salehpour told NBC News on Monday that he would never board a Dreamliner with his family.
Boeing has denied it ever retaliated against him.
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