An worker works on the tail of a Boeing Co. plane. A Dreamliner 787 on the production line at the company’s final assembly plant in North Charleston, South Carolina.
Travis Dove | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Boeing on Monday defended quality and safety testing of its 787 Dreamliner and 777 planes, days after one of the company’s engineers went public with allegations that the planemaker cut corners to hurry production of the planes.
Whistleblower Sam Salehpour said last week that assembling the Boeing 787 puts undue stress on the plane’s joints, which could shorten the lifespan of some planes. Boeing denied the allegations, calling them “untrue” and said it stands for aircraft safety.
Salehpour is scheduled to look with one other whistleblower who worked for Boeing, a former aviation official and independent safety expert, at a Wednesday Senate hearing on aircraft safety titled “Examining Boeing’s Broken Safety Culture: First-Hand Accounts.”
Salehpour’s claims come as Boeing conducts an in-depth review after a door plug exploded on a 737 Max plane in January. The narrow-body plane is Boeing’s best seller, and the explosion at an altitude of 5,000 meters brought passengers one step away from tragedy. Since the accident, the Federal Aviation Administration has blocked Boeing from increasing production of the plane.
During a roughly two-hour presentation with reporters on Monday, two Boeing engineering managers detailed the company’s endurance and safety tests of the B787, which involve testing the plane through 165,000 cycles, each designed to supply the equivalent of flight in a variety of conditions. Engineers further found that a 300-pound pendulum struck the hull plating.
Steve Chisholm, Boeing’s chief engineer for mechanical and structural engineering, said Boeing caused damage to the fuselage panels through intensive testing that was repeated more times than the plane experienced in service, “and the damage did not increase.”
Salehpour’s allegations concern small spaces where sections of the Boeing 787’s carbon composite fuselage meet. He said Boeing used force to place the pieces together and measured the gaps incorrectly. In January, he and his lawyers sent a letter to the FAA detailing their allegations, and the agency is investigating.
The whistleblower said last week on a call with reporters that he “literally saw people jumping on the pieces” of the 777 “to get them to line up.” Later that day, Boeing stated that these claims were false and that it “has full confidence in the safety and durability of the 777 family.”
Boeing previously suspended deliveries of the 787 for nearly two years, until August 2022, attributable to the incorrect arrangement of some parts of the plane’s fuselage.
“These claims regarding the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate and do not reflect the comprehensive work Boeing has done to ensure the quality and long-term safety of the aircraft,” the planemaker said in a statement responding to the claims. “The issues raised were subjected to rigorous technical review under the supervision of the FAA. This evaluation confirmed that these issues don’t pose any safety risk and the aircraft will maintain its service life for several many years.”
Salehpour’s lawyers also maintain that Boeing retaliated against him after he expressed his concerns by excluding him from meetings and transferring him from the 787 program to the company’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 scheduled to report quarterly results on April 24, when it will face investor questions about aircraft safety, production rates and FAA oversight.
Credit : www.cnbc.com
