A Boeing whistleblower recently claimed he was chided for slowing production when he found defects in airplane parts.
The former quality inspector, identified as Santiago Paredes, who previously worked for Spirit AeroSystems in Kansas, told the BBC that plane bodies were regularly shipped out of the factory with serious issues, the outlet reported Wednesday.
Paredes claimed he used to find nearly 200 defects in the parts, and he tried to slow production to deal with the problems.
He also alleged that leadership put him under pressure to not be so meticulous.
“They always made a fuss about why I was finding it, why I was looking at it,” the former Air Force technician alleged:
They just wanted the product shipped out. They weren’t focused on the consequences of shipping bad fuselages. They were just focused on meeting the quotas, meeting the schedule, meeting the budget…If the numbers looked good, the state of the fuselages didn’t really matter.
The allegations come as Spirit AeroSystems and Boeing grapple with scrutiny after a door flew off a 737 Max airplane while it was in the air in January.
“According to investigators, the door had originally been fitted by Spirit, but had subsequently been removed by Boeing technicians to rectify faulty riveting,” the BBC report said.
Paredes told CBS News he found problems “every day.”
John Barnett, a former Boeing worker who became a whistleblower involved in litigation against the company and was found dead, had reportedly “made powerful enemies” while working for the company, according to a Breitbart News report from March.Police said Barnett died of a “self-inflicted wound,” the outlet stated, adding that a close friend of his claimed Barnett had predicted he would be killed and his death made to look like suicide.
Boeing CEO David Calhoun was summoned to testify before a Senate subcommittee regarding the company’s jetliners because a whistleblower levied more safety-related allegations against the company, Breitbart News reported on April 10.
The outlet also noted Calhoun recently said he would retire from the company at the close of 2024.
To read more articles about the issues plaguing Boeing, please click here.
