Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour warned Senate members that hundreds of passengers’ lives are at stake if Boeing continues to have quality and safety issues.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) asked Salehpour, “Are these planes safe?”
Salehpour responded, “It’s like an earthquake. The big earthquake is coming, and when that hits, the building has to be prepared to accommodate that kind of—let’s say—shake-up. It has to be built properly.”
“From what I’ve seen, the airplanes are not being built per spec and per requirements,” he added.
“Since 2013, there have been serious issues on the 787 program not properly closing thousands of gaps in its assembly of the fuselage on major joints. Boeing’s standard says that these joints, these gaps, must be closed, usually buy a small shim, or filler called the ‘shim’ when they exceed 5,000ths of an inch,” Salehpour said before the Senate. “This seems very small – Boeing’s PR team like to call it the width of a human hair – but when you are operating at 35,000 feet, details are that the size of a human hair can be a matter of life and death.”
“In a rush to address these bottlenecks in production, Boeing hit problems pushing pieces together with excessive force to make them appear that the gaps don’t exist, even though they exist, the gap didn’t actually go away, and this may result in premature fatigue failure effectively.”
The whistleblower emphasized that while he has “raised these issues over three years,” he was “ignored.”
“I was told not to create delays,” he said. “I was told, frankly, to shut up.”
“At one point, Boeing management got sick of me raising these issues and moved me out of the 787 program into the 777 program,” he continued, explaining that again found problems.
“Again, I raised concerns internally. I was sidelined. I was told to shut up. I received physical threats,” the engineer described, noting that his boss said, “I would have killed someone who said what you said in a meeting.”
Last month, another Boeing Whistleblower, John Barnett, was found dead in a hotel parking lot.
He was found with “self-inflicted” injuries.
Prior to his death, Barnett, who worked for Boeing for 32 years, came forward with concerns regarding oxygen masks and other issues and was involved in a lawsuit against Boeing.
According to the whistleblower, 25% of masks would not work in an emergency.
