Boeing put under scrutiny during hearings

Boeing was the subject of dual Senate hearings Wednesday as Congress examined allegations of major safety failures at the embattled aircraft manufacturer, which has been pushed into crisis mode since a door-plug panel blew off a 737 Max jetliner during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

The Senate Commerce Committee heard from members of an expert panel that found serious flaws in Boeing’s safety culture.

In a report issued in February, the expert panel said that despite improvements made after crashes of two Boeing Max jets killed 346 people, Boeing’s approach to safety remains flawed and employees who raise concerns could be subject to pressure and retaliation.

One of the witnesses, MIT aeronautics lecturer Javier de Luis, lost his sister when a Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed in Ethiopia in 2019.

De Luis commented on the disconnect between Boeing management’s words about safety and what workers observe on the factory floor.

“They hear, ‘Safety is our number one priority,’ ” he said. “What they see is that’s only true as long as your production milestones are met, and at that point it’s ‘Push it out the door as fast as you can.’ ”

In talking to Boeing workers, de Luis said he heard “there was a very real fear of payback and retribution if you held your ground.”

A second Senate hearing Wednesday featured a Boeing engineer who testified that the company is taking shortcuts in assembling 787 Dreamliners that leaves sections of an aircraft’s skin vulnerable to breaking apart.

“They are putting out defective airplanes,” the whistleblower, Sam Salehpour, told members of an investigative subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.