Hours before Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun testified in front of Congress, new whistleblower allegations came out against the planemaker, alleging a “systemic disregard” for documentation and accountability of faulty parts in 737 Max jets at the company’s Renton, Washington facility.
Members of U.S. Senate investigations panel grilled Calhoun extensively during a June 18 session, pointing to testimony from multiple whistleblowers who previously alleged to the panel that Boeing has been “cutting every possible corner on quality and safety,” Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) said.
“They’ve alleged that you’ve eliminated safety inspections, that there are fewer inspectors doing quality inspections, that when they’ve raised quality concerns they were reassigned, they were retaliated against, and they were physically threatened,” Hawley added.
Hours earlier, the panel also revealed new whistleblower allegations in a 200-plus page report. In that report, Sam Mohawk —a quality assurance investigator at Boeing’s 737 assembly plant in Renton, Washington — claimed that Boeing lost track of hundreds of nonconforming, potentially defective parts, that those parts may have been installed in new planes, and that the company attempted to hide evidence of this from Federal Aviation Administration inspectors.
This is in addition to allegations from several other whistleblowers who have stepped forward in recent months, including Spirit Aerosystems quality manager Santiago Paredes, who told CBS News in May that the Boeing supplier had knowingly delivered defective 737 fuselages for years. The month before that, The New York Times spoke to Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour, who claimed that 787 Dreamliner fuselages were in danger of coming apart due to sections that weren’t the same shape when they were connected.
During his opening remarks, Calhoun issued an apology to the families of victims who were killed in a pair of Boeing 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019. He also expressed regret for the now-infamous January 2024 incident where a door plug blew out in midair aboard a 737 Max 9, noting that Boeing “took responsibility and cooperated transparently” with federal regulators to enact large-scale changes to the company’s safety procedures.
“In our factories and in our supply chain, we took immediate action to ensure the specific circumstances that led to this accident would not happen again,” he said. “Importantly, we went beyond to look comprehensively at our quality and manufacturing systems.”
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- Source: https://www.supplychainbrain.com/articles/39900-boeing-senate-hearing-physical-threats-against-whistleblowers-and-systemic-disregard-for-safety
