A Boeing engineer doubled down on his push for the airplane giant to pause production on its troubled 787 Dreamliner model — insisting that he would not allow his own family to fly on the plane due to his safety concerns.
The 787 could “drop to the ground” midair unless the supposed safety issues are addressed, quality engineer and whistleblower Sam Salehpour told NBC Nightly News on Tuesday.
The gaps could result in “premature fatigue failure” as the planes get older, he claimed.
When asked if he would put his own family on a 787, the engineer vehemently said “Right now, I would not.”
Salehpour’s latest comments came ahead of his testimony before a US Senate subcommittee on Wednesday.
He previously raised eyebrows when he explained how the Dreamliner’s fuselages come in multiple pieces that are all from different companies, which resulted in small gaps in how the parts fit together.
Boeing quickly denied the former employees comments, telling NBC that “the claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate.”
“The issues raised have been subject to rigorous engineering examination under FAA oversight,” the company insisted.
Two Boeing engineers also defended the integrity of the 787 during a media tour of the Dreamliner manufacturing plant in South Carolina on Monday, the outlet said.
The jet has been stress-tested for 165,000 cycles, or beyond the anticipated lifecycle of a plane, and never once failed, they said.
An inspection of 689 of the 1,000 787s in use worldwide also turned up zero evidence of fatigue, they added.
“Even if these cracks would form, which there’s no evidence of, the airplane is so resistant, and so structurally robust, according to Boeing, that they’re not going to break apart,” Jeff Guzzetti, a former Federal Aviation Administration safety investigator, told NBC News.
Boeing is still in a tailspin over a mid flight incident on Jan. 5, during which a door panel from a 737 Max 9 blew out on a packed Alaska Airlines flight.
The terrifying mishap resulted in increased scrutiny over the company’s manufacturing processes and prompted Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun to announce plans to resign.
Salehpour’s allegations went public last week in a scathing report from the New York Times, which explained that he brought his concerns to the FAA in January.
The engineer also said that, when he raised the concerns internally in 2022, Boeing responded by transferring him to the 777 line, NBC noted.
“When I see questionable actions that could cause safety problems, I have committed I’m going to come forward regardless of what the cost is,” Salehpour told NBC of the potential professional fallout from going public.
Lisa Banks, Salehpour’s lawyer, told NBC that she heard from at least half a dozen “additional would-be whistleblowers at Boeing who have reported the same kinds of issues that Sam has raised with Boeing.”
“I’m 100% confident in Sam’s allegations because they’re based on Boeing’s own data and Sam’s decades of experience as a quality engineer,” she added.
