Sam Salehpour, a quality engineer at Boeing, will testify before the Senate on Wednesday regarding what he says is the company’s “alarming and dangerous manufacturing deficiencies” that could cause “potentially catastrophic” incidents for the 787 Dreamliner and the 777, two of the manufacturers largest aircraft—although Boeing has called his claims “inaccurate.”
Salehpour claims the company uses “potentially defective parts” that could cause cracks in an ... [+]
In 2021 and 2022, Salehpour sent reports to the Federal Aviation Administration accusing Boeing of “taking shortcuts” to reduce bottlenecks in the production line of the 787 Dreamliner, which resulted in “faulty engineering and faulty evaluation of the data, which has allowed potentially defective parts and installations in 787 fleets.”
Salehpour, who has over four decades of experience as an engineer at Boeing, according to his attorneys, told the New York Times the pieces of the 787 Dreamliner’s fuselage are all produced in separate factories by different manufacturers, and do not fit together properly when the aircraft are assembled in Boeing facilities.
Boeing’s assembly practices have drawn scrutiny over the past few months after a piece of fuselage, which was built by Nebraska manufacturer Spirit AeroSystems, fell off a 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.
After raising safety concerns about the 787, Salehpour was transferred to the production line of the 777—where he found similar problems with fuselage misalignment on that aircraft as well.
"I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align," Salehpour told reporters on a call last week, which he warned could lead to fatigue—cracks that can develop in an aircraft’s fuselage over time.
Boeing previously suspended most production of the 787 for about two years until August 2022 due to problems with shims—small pieces placed to close gaps between the aircraft’s assembled parts.
“Boeing has ignored [the whistleblower’s] concerns and has failed to take remedial action,” Salehpour’s attorney Debra Katz told the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations before his name was made public. “Instead, it has retaliated against [the whistleblower] by sidelining [the whistleblower] and excluding [the whistleblower] from key meetings. [The whistleblower’s] supervisor has subjected [the whistleblower] to repeated threats and Boeing has prevented [the whistleblower] from consulting with subject matter experts to implement approaches that would prevent these dangerous defects.”
In a statement sent to Forbes, Boeing called Salehpour’s claims “inaccurate” and said it was “fully confident” in the 787 Dreamliner’s safety. The company said the Dreamliner was put through “rigorous engineering examination under FAA oversight” and expected the aircraft currently flying to remain in service for “several decades.” On Monday, Boeing’s chief engineer Steve Chisholm told reporters that the company found no evidence of airframe fatigue cracks in the roughly 700 787 Dreamliners currently in service. In their statement, the company also said it will “continue to monitor these issues under established regulatory protocols and encourage all employees to speak up when issues arise. Retaliation is strictly prohibited at Boeing.”
Salehpour is not the first Boeing employee to raise concerns about safety practices. In 2019, John Barnett, a 32-year veteran of the company, came forward with similar allegations about the 787 Dreamliner’s production flaws. Barnett said he witnessed workers at the company’s plant in South Carolina assemble aircraft with faulty parts, found sharp metal shavings near the aircraft’s wiring and identified problems with the aircraft’s emergency oxygen systems. Similar to Salehpour, Barnett said his reports were ignored and he was moved to a different production line. Barnett was found dead in a parking lot just days before he was set to testify as part of a lawsuit against the company in South Carolina. Authorities believe his death was caused by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.