Boeing defended the standard and safety testing of its 787 Dreamliner and 777 planes on Monday, days after one in all the corporate's engineers went public with allegations that the plane maker took “shortcuts” to hurry up production of the planes.
Whistleblower Sam Salehpour said last week that assembling Boeing's 787 put excessive stress on the plane's joints, which could shorten the lifespan of some planes. Boeing rejected the allegations, calling them “inaccurate” and saying it stood for the protection of the planes.
Salehpour, together with one other whistleblower who worked at Boeing, a former aviation official and independent safety expert, is scheduled to look Wednesday at a Senate hearing on aircraft safety called “Investigating Boeing's Broken Safety Culture: First-Hand Accounts.”
Salehpour's claims come as Boeing is under intense scrutiny after a door plug flew out of a 737 Max plane in January. The narrow-body aircraft is Boeing's best-seller, and the accident at 16,000 feet left passengers inches from tragedy. Since the accident, the Federal Aviation Administration has blocked Boeing from increasing production of the aircraft.
In a roughly two-hour presentation to reporters Monday, two Boeing engineering managers detailed the corporate's stress and safety tests for the 787, which include testing the plane in 165,000 cycles, each designed to correspond to a flight under different conditions. In addition, the fuselage skin was hit by a 300-pound pendulum, engineers said.
Steve Chisholm, Boeing's chief engineer for mechanical and structural engineering, said Boeing caused damage to fuselage panels in intensive testing repeated more times than aircraft would experience in service, “and the damage has not increased.”
Salehpour's claims relate to tiny spaces where parts of the 787's carbon composite fuselage come together. He said Boeing used force to suit the pieces together and didn't properly measure the gaps. He and his lawyers sent a letter to the FAA in January detailing his allegations and the agency is investigating.
The whistleblower said on a call with reporters last week that he “literally saw people jumping on the pieces” of the 777 “trying to get them to agree.” Boeing said later that day that those claims were inaccurate and that the corporate was “completely confident in the safety and durability of the 777 family.”
Boeing had previously suspended deliveries of the 787 for nearly two years until August 2022 due to incorrect clearances on some parts of the plane's fuselage.
“These claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate and do not represent the extensive work Boeing has done to ensure the quality and long-term safety of the aircraft,” the plane maker said in a press release concerning the claims. “The issues raised have undergone a rigorous technical review under FAA oversight. This analysis has confirmed that these issues do not represent safety concerns and that the aircraft will maintain its service life for several decades.”
Salehpour's lawyers also allege that Boeing retaliated against him after he raised his concerns by excluding him from meetings and moving him from the 787 program to the corporate's 777 plan.
Last week, Boeing declined to comment on these specific allegations, citing the FAA's ongoing whistleblower investigation, but said, “Retaliation is strictly prohibited at Boeing.”
The company is anticipated to report quarterly results on April 24, facing investor questions on aircraft safety, production rates and FAA oversight.
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