Boeing Being Investigated After Whistleblower Raises Safety Concerns

Boeing is being investigated by federal authorities after a whistleblower raised safety concerns about two widebody jet models. The individual said the company threatened him with termination.

Engineer Sam Salehpour, a Boeing engineer, alleges that the company took shortcuts when building its 777 and 787 Dreamliner jets. According to Salehpour, the risks become more pronounced as the airplanes age. The New York Times first reported the whistleblower statement. However, Boeing said the claims were “inaccurate” and was confident its planes were safe.

“The issues raised have been subject to rigorous engineering examination under [Federal Aviation Administration] oversight,” the company told the BBC, adding: “This analysis has validated that these issues do not present any safety concerns and the aircraft will maintain its service life over several decades.”

Shares in the plane company dropped almost two percent on Tuesday, April 9th after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it was looking into the claims, and the manufacturer reported it had delivered just eighty-three planes to customers in the first three months of the year. This is the smallest amount since 2021.

Previous Boeing safety issues

The whistleblower statement is the most recent incident to draw attention to the safety of planes manufactured by US-based Boeing, one of the world’s two major producers of planes. The company was already under criminal investigation and other legal troubles, following an unused exit door breaking off of one of its smaller 737 Max 9 planes not long after take-off in January.

Those on board escaped serious injury, but the incident has put the company in crisis, bringing about a temporary grounding of dozens of 737 Max 9 planes. The incident also led to regulatory checks and prompted Boeing to significantly slow down production of its planes.

Placed under serious scrutiny, the plane manufacturer led its Chief Executive David Calhoun to announce last month that he would step down by the end of the year.

Yesterday, lawyers serving engineer Salehpour claimed Boeing had made decisions for 787 aircraft manufacturing that placed stress on joints that linked up parts of the body of the jets. This was an issue affecting more than a thousand planes.

In a whistleblower statement filed with the FAA in January, he alleged the assembly method could reduce the lifespan of the plane.

“These problems are the direct result of Boeing’s decision in recent years to prioritize profits over safety, and a regulator in the FAA that has become too deferential to industry,” his lawyers, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, said in a statement.

The lawyers also stated that Salehpour had been transferred to work on the 777 plane after he raised concerns. They added that he had soon noticed other issues in the assembly of that plane.

“He was threatened with termination, excluded from important meetings, projects, and communication, denied reasonable requests for medical leave, assigned work outside of his expertise, and effectively declared persona non grata to his colleagues,” they said.

Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner planes, which entered service in 2011, have a fifty-year lifespan or a capacity of roughly 44,000 flights each, the company said, as reported by CNN. The safety allegations are not new, however. For nearly two years beginning in 2021, the FAA and Boeing stopped deliveries of the new Dreamliners while they looked into the gaps. Boeing claimed to have made changes to its manufacturing process, and deliveries ultimately resumed.