Boeing CEO David Calhoun will face a barbecue in Congress on Tuesday in his first appearance before lawmakers since a panel blown out of a 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight in January. Calhoun will tell the Senate investigative subcommittee that the culture is “far from perfect” – just as two new whistleblowers have emerged.
According to prepared remarks shared by Boeing ahead of the 2 p.m. hearing in the east of the country, Calhoun said the company is “committed to ensuring that every employee feels empowered to speak up when there is an issue” , and emphasized that Boeing is working to “improve transparency and accountability, while increasing employee engagement.”
On Tuesday, the Senate subcommittee released information about two whistleblowers who recently surfaced. Current Boeing employee Sam Mohawk claims that “Boeing improperly documents, tracks and stores parts that are damaged or otherwise out of specification, and that those parts are likely installed on aircraft,” the statement said.
He also claims that his supervisors instructed him to withhold evidence from the Federal Aviation Administration, the Senate subcommittee said.
The second whistleblower, who is anonymous, alleged to the subcommittee that Boeing made efforts to eliminate quality inspections but instead tapped employees to inspect their own work and that of their colleagues.
“This is a culture that continues to prioritize profits, push boundaries and ignore its employees,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat and a Boeing critic who also chairs the subcommittee, said in a statement Tuesday. “A culture where those who speak out are silenced and sidelined, while the blame is shifted to the factory floor.”
In a statement to CBS News, Boeing said it received information about the new whistleblowers on Monday evening and was reviewing their claims. “We continually encourage employees to report any concerns as our priority is to ensure the safety of our aircraft and the flying public,” the company said.
Boeing denied claims earlier this year that it had reduced the number of safety inspectors.
“In January 2019, a senior Boeing quality manager told The Seattle Times that the company planned to reduce the role of inspectors in its quality organization by 900 people and reform the way it conducts quality checks by integrating technology and monitoring into the secondary inspection process. Boeing has not reduced these inspector roles, has expanded our quality team and has significantly increased the number of inspections per aircraft since 2019,” the company said in a statement at the time.
Whistleblowers claim
In a Senate report on whistleblowers’ claims, Mohawk claims that when Boeing restarted production of the 737 Max after two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, there was “a 300% increase” in reports of parts that did not comply the manufacturer’s standards.
While hundreds of non-compliant parts were to be removed from production and closely monitored, “Mohawk feared that non-compliant parts were being installed on the 737s and could lead to a catastrophic event,” the report said.
The document states that Mohawk also claims that when Boeing learned of an upcoming FAA inspection last June, many parts were moved to another location to “intentionally conceal improperly stored parts from the FAA.”
In April, Boeing whistleblowersincluding Sam Salehpour, a quality engineer at the company, testified to lawmakers.
“Despite what Boeing officials say publicly, there is no safety culture at Boeing, and employees like me who speak out about flaws in manufacturing operations and lack of quality control are ignored, marginalized, threatened, sidelined and worse,” he told the members of an investigative panel of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
Boeing has denied Salehpour’s allegations and defended the safety of its planes, including the Dreamliner.
Boeing’s deadly Max crashes
No one was seriously injured in the Alaska Airlines incident, but the incident raised new concerns about the company’s best-selling commercial aircraft. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are conducting separate investigations.
“From the beginning, we have taken responsibility and worked transparently with the NTSB and the FAA,” Calhoun said in his remarks before the hearing. He defended the company’s safety culture. “We are taking comprehensive action today to strengthen safety and quality.”
Blumenthal has heard that before, when Boeing was reeling from the deadly Max crashes in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019.
“Five years ago, Boeing made a commitment to overhaul its safety practices and culture. That promise proved empty, and the American people deserve an explanation,” Blumenthal said in announcing the hearing. He called Calhoun’s testimony a necessary step for Boeing to regain public trust.
Calhoun’s appearance would also come as the Justice Department considers prosecuting Boeing for violating the terms of a settlement over the deadly crashes.
Calhoun will leave his position at the end of this year when a new CEO is appointed.
—With reporting by Kris Van Cleave and Associated Press.
