I saw Boeing staff jump on plane parts to force them to fit – when I told bosses they threatened me, says whistleblower
A BRAVE Boeing whistleblower has described how he witnessed workers jumping on plane parts to force them to fit on “defected” aircraft.
Engineer Sam Salehpour says he was told to “shut up” and threatened by Boeing bosses after constantly raising serious safety concerns over how the planes were being assembled.
His claims come as Boeing continues to be put under pressure for a number of “defective” aircraft after hundreds of deaths, crashes and calamities have been linked back to the company.
Salehpour took part in the bombshell back-to-back US Congress hearings this week as he testified against his employers.
The engineer worked at Boeing for a decade and claims he tried to warn them of his concerns over much of that time period.
At the Congress hearing Salehpour said: “I’m not here today because I want to be here.
“I am here because I feel I must come forward because I do not want to see a 787 or another 777 crash.
“I was ignored, told not to create delays, told, frankly, to shut up…
“My boss said, ‘I would have killed someone who said what you said,’ during a meeting.”
His biggest issues were with how the 787 jets were being assembled over the past three years.
Salehpour said he would witness fellow employees excessively “squashing” various aircraft parts when they were assembling planes.
In one of the shocking claims he said: “I literally saw people jumping on pieces of the airplane to get them to align.
“I repeatedly produced reports for my supervisor and Boeing management that the gaps on the 787 were not being properly measured or shimmed into two major joints of the 787.”
Salehpour found that across 29 planes, major gaps were reported but not addressed a staggering 98.7 per cent of the time.
In a further 80 per cent of cases, the unclosed gaps ended up being filled with debris, he told Congress.
I’m scared but I’m at peace. If something happens to me, I’m at peace. I feel like by coming forward I’m saving a lot of lives
Sam Salehpour
Salehpour said his complaints were all ignored and he was made to move from project to project due to his damning reports.
One project he was shifted over to saw even more worrying issues arise.
He was moved on to the 777 jet program where he claims to have seen countless more manufacturing blunders.
Once again he was ignored and eventually ended up being banned from meetings and sent on irrelevant trips away from the jets.
Salehpour even made allegations saying he was sent death threats for his criticisms.
“I’m scared but I’m at peace. If something happens to me, I’m at peace,” he said.
“I feel like by coming forward I’m saving a lot of lives.”
Before claiming Boeing made his life “miserable” and imposed a dreadful culture onto their employees where harassment was seemingly allowed.
The chairman of the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations Richard Blumenthal called the Boeing sage “serious, even shocking”.
Before continuing: “There are mounting, serious allegations that Boeing has a broken safety culture, and a set of practices that are unacceptable.”
BOEING’S RESPONSE
Boeing has always maintained their 787 and 777 jets are safe to fly.
Engineers on Monday, 15, rejected the claims by Salehpour, saying the metal surfaces on the planes don’t fatigue.
According to Boeing, 165,000 flights were looked at with no signs of fatigue being recorded on any of them.
A spokesperson for Boeing told The Sun: “Since 2020, Boeing has taken important steps to foster a safety culture that empowers and encourages all employees to raise their voice.
“We know we have more work to do and we are taking action across our company.
“We continue to put safety and quality above all else and share information transparently with our regulator, customers and other stakeholders.”
RECENT TROUBLES
Salehpour’s allegations are set to form a much wider investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration after a string of controversies.
Former Boeing employee turned whistleblower John Barnett, 62, gave evidence against the company just days before he died from a “self-inflicted” wound.
He had been providing evidence of alleged wrongdoing at Boeing to investigators working on a lawsuit against the company at the time of his death, according to the BBC.
In 2019, he told reporters he had seen workers purposely fitting sub-standard parts onto aircraft on the production line.
Barnett claimed that defective parts were mishandled and sometimes lost or refitted to planes from the company scrapyard to meet production timelines.
He also alleged that he had discovered major issues in some of the planes’ oxygen systems which could lead to one in four masks not functioning properly.
He also says his complaints were ignored.
Boeing was also in the headlines recently for having a number of serious issues with its planes.
Fifty passengers were injured on a LATAM flight on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner flying between Australia and New Zealand due to a “technical issue”.
The plane subsequently took a terrifying nosedive.
Sky high chaos: a timeline of Boeing incidents
BOEING has found itself at the centre of increasingly concerning reports in recent months thanks to malfunctions on its planes.
April 2018- Woman dies after being partially sucked out of window on Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 flight
October 2018 – Boeing 737 MAX 8 Indonesia Lion Air fatal crash leaves 189 dead
March 2019 – Boeing 737 MAX 8 Ethiopia Airlines fatal crash leaves 157 dead
January 2024 – Boeing 747 Delta Airlines plane loses front tyre
January 2024 – Boeing Alaska Airlines ripped window leaving gaping hole in the plane
March 2024 – Wheel falls off Boeing 777 United Airlines plane smashing cars below
March 2024 – Boeing 787 LATAM LA800 took a “sudden nose-dive” leaving 50 injured
April 2024- Boeing 737 engine cover ripped off mid-air
As they are also facing a criminal investigation over an Alaskan Airlines flight after a door blew out at 16,000ft.
The Federal Aviation Administration later grounded certain Boeing 737s with all airlines until proper inspections were completed.
Shocking footage also caught showing the moment a wheel fell off a Boeing 777 flying over California, grounding the flight intended for Japan.
Pictures show cars smashed up on the ground as the wheel collided with parked up motors.
Terrifying footage captured the moment a Boeing 737’s engine cover ripped off mid-air earlier this month.
The Houston-bound flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Denver on Sunday after the engine cowling struck the wing flap.
A pilot was even forced to turn his plane around after poo flowed out into the cabin of a Boeing 777 due to a defective toilet.
Meanwhile, Boeing has been sued by shareholders claiming that the company prioritised profit over safety, according to Reuters.
In February, the FAA concluded that Boeing had “a lack of awareness of safety-related metrics at all levels.”
It also said that “employees had difficulty distinguishing the differences among various measuring methods, their purpose and outcomes.”
FATAL BOEING CRASHES
In 2019, 157 people died when an Ethiopian Airlines flight came plummeting down after departing from an Addis Ababa airport on the morning of March 10.
The pilot reported difficulties shortly after takeoff and asked to turn the plane around.
The Boeing 737 MAX 8s, which came down around Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, about 31 miles south of the capital city, was delivered to the airline about four months prior.
The flight was carrying 149 passengers and eight crew members but there were no survivors.
Nine British passengers were on the flight and lost their lives – two more than first feared.
It was the second time in less than six months that one of the planes plummeted to earth within minutes of taking off, after a new Lion Air Boeing 737 Max 8 flight went down over the Java Sea in October 2018.
One child was among the six victims pulled from the sea.
A tragic 189 people died in Indonesia just moments after the pilot reported “technical difficulties”.
The firm’s CEO said the jet underwent repair work the night before.
In 2018, a woman also died when a piece of engine housing ripped off a Southwest Airlines 737 and shattered the window she was sitting next to.
She was partially sucked out of the plane as it lost cabin pressure before other passengers pulled her back in.
Seven others were injured.
