April 17 (UPI) — The U.S. Senate Wednesday will scrutinize Boeing’s safety practices at two committee hearings.
The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a meeting at 10 a.m. EDT where it will review findings from an independent expert panel Federal Aviation Administration on safety management processes and culture at Boeing, while the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will hear testimony on Boeing’s “broken safety culture” following accusations about its 787 Dreamliner by whistleblower Sam Salephour.
Salephour, an engineer at Boeing for more than 10 years who warned that parts of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner risk breaking apart after thousands of trips due to being improperly fastened during assembly, will testify at the second hearing.
Boeing’s CEO David Calhoun, was invited to testify before the subcommittee but will not attend.
“The whistleblower will have the guts to show up, and I’m hoping that Dave Calhoun will as well at some point in the future,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told The Hill.
Blumenthal added the hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will focus on “shocking allegations about failures and safety practices and culture” at Boeing.
Salephour claims that risk surrounding the Dreamliners was caused by assembly line changes in how different sections coming from different manufacturers lack uniformity where they are fastened together.
Unless this is corrected, Salephour said, “catastrophic failure” could result.
The whistleblower said production shortcuts were implemented to reduce production bottlenecks.
Boeing denied the assembly process puts excess pressure on the plane’s joints.
Steve Chisholm, chief engineer for mechanical and structuring at Boeing, said Boeing created damage to fuselage panels in tests that were repeated in excess of what the jets would experience in service and found “the damage didn’t grow.” according to Chisholm
But Salephour told reporters he saw people jumping on pieces of the 777 trying to get them to line up properly in assembly.
Boeing spokeswoman Jessica Kowal claimed allegations about the 787’s structural integrity are inaccurate and the company is “fully confident in the 787 Dreamliner.”
Boeing is being investigated by the U.S. Senate and the FAA following the loss of a door plug in mid-flight on an Alaskan Airlines 737 Max 9.
Boeing whistleblower John Barnett, who had also expressed concerns about quality control, was found dead of an apparent suicide last month in a South Carolina parking lot.
In a March 19 letter from the Senate Investigations Committee Blumenthal and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., told Calhoun that the company’s alleged treatment of Barnett and apparent handling of his allegations “raise many questions about your company’s commitment to aircraft safety.”
“The Subcommittee’s receipt of these allegations follows several contemporaneous reports that have also called into question Boeing’s safety policies and practices,” they wrote.
That letter demanded Boeing turn over records relating to safety practices and whistleblower protocols and policies. That information request included all records relating to 777 and 787 aircraft safety as well as records relating to employees raising concerns about the safety and integrity of the jets.
The information request covers January 1, 2018, to the present.
