Boeing's safety culture under fire at US Senate hearing

The Star

Current and former Boeing employees delivered stark warnings at two US Senate hearings on Wednesday (April 17) over safety culture and manufacturing quality at the planemaker which has been under scrutiny since the door plug panel blew off an Alaska Airlines flight in January.  WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

Transcript

00:00 >> I swear that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and

00:04 nothing but the truth, so help you God.

00:08 Thank you.

00:11 And meet with you privately.

00:14 >> Getting on airlines.

00:16 Mr. Salipur, you may begin.

00:19 Thank you.

00:21 >> I'm not here today because I want to be here.

00:23 I'm here today because I felt that I must come forward, because I do not want to see

00:28 another 787, I do not want to see 787 or 7777 crash.

00:35 I have serious concerns about the safety of the 787 and 7777 aircraft, and I'm willing

00:41 to take on professional risk to talk about them.

00:44 I have analyzed Boeing's own data to conclude that the company is taking manufacturing shortcuts

00:50 on the 787 program that may significantly reduce the airplane safety and the life cycle.

00:59 Since 2013, there have been serious issues on the 787 program not properly closing thousands

01:06 of gaps in its assembly of the fuselage on major joints.

01:10 Boeing's standard says that these gaps must be closed, usually by a small shim or filler

01:17 called a shim when they exceed 5,000ths of an inch.

01:21 Details are that the size of a human hair can be a matter of life and death.

01:28 In a rush to address its bottlenecks in production, Boeing hit problems pushing pieces together

01:34 with excessive force to make them appear that the gaps don't exist, even though they exist.

01:40 The gap didn't actually go away, and this may result in premature fatigue failure.

01:46 Effectively, they are putting out defective airplanes.

01:48 I found gaps exceeding the specification that were not properly addressed 98.7% of the time.

01:57 I want to repeat that.

01:59 98.7% of the time, the gaps that they were supposed to be shimmed, they were not shimmed.

02:04 As a result, I witnessed severe misalignment when the planes were assembled.

02:10 Boeing manufacturing used unmeasured and unlimited amount of force to correct the misalignment.

02:17 And this also weakens the airplane in the long run.

02:21 I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align.

02:27 I call it the Tarzan effect, among other improper methods.

02:31 Again, I raised concerns internally.

02:34 I was sidelined.

02:35 I was told to shut up.

02:36 I received physical threats.

02:38 I've done everything I can to continue telling the world the MAX airplane is still unsafe

02:43 and to alert authorities to Boeing's dangerous manufacturing.

02:48 I'm here today to share four key messages.

02:50 First, the manufacturing conditions that led to the two 737 MAX disasters also led to the

02:56 Alaskan accident, blowout accident.

02:58 And these conditions continue.

03:01 In 2019, I testified as a Boeing whistleblower.

03:04 I had previously warned the 737 general manager before the MAX crash to shut down the factory.

03:12 I also warned Boeing's general counsels, the CEO, and the board of directors before the

03:16 second crash to shut it down.

03:18 They ignored my warnings.

03:20 During my 2019 testimony, I described the chaotic manufacturing, the dysfunctional safety

03:25 culture, and the horrible job government authorities were doing investigating the two crashes.

03:30 The world is shocked to learn about Boeing's current production quality issues.

03:33 I'm not surprised because nothing changed after the two crashes.

03:37 There was no accountability.

03:39 Boeing routinely states that their airplanes meet or exceed all safety standards.

03:43 This is untrue and misrepresents the safety of the airplanes.

03:47 The company illegally removed thousands of quality control inspections on individual

03:51 airplanes without the FAA's knowledge and without the knowledge of the airlines.

03:56 Although many of these inspections have been reinstated, hundreds of airplanes have left

04:00 Boeing factories without those thousands of inspections.

04:03 Let me be clear.

04:05 When you try to increase productivity without the needed resources and being guided by poor

04:12 management with only financial focus and the lack of assembly line inspectors, you are

04:19 always borrowing from safety.

04:22 You cannot have both.

04:24 Case in point, this is where we see events like the door blowout with Alaska Airlines.

04:30 First and foremost is one that has been talked about since the report came out, is our finding

04:35 that there exists a disconnect, for lack of a better word, between the words that are

04:40 being said by Boeing management and what is being seen and experienced by employees across

04:47 the company.

04:49 They hear safety is our number one priority, but what they see is that that's only true

04:54 as long as your production milestones are met, and at that point, it's push it out the

04:58 door as fast as you can.

05:00 They hear speak up if you see anything that's unsafe, but what they see is that if they

05:06 do speak up, they get very little feedback, and if they insist, they may find themselves

05:13 on the short end of the stick next time raises or bonuses or job transfers come up or even

05:19 worse.

05:21 We found this disconnect to be present at almost all levels and at all work sites that

05:25 we visited.

05:26 We heard it from technicians, we heard it from engineers, and we heard it, more concerning,

05:31 from members of the ODA that are delegated by the FAA to conduct inspections and tests

05:37 on behalf of the government.

05:39 To me, it is clear that the commitment to change, the level of change, and the pace

05:45 of change at Boeing is not commensurate with the events that created the need for all this

05:51 change in the first place, namely the two fatal crashes of two brand new airplanes five

05:56 years ago.

05:56 [ Silence ]

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