Boeing whistleblowers testify to Senate: What we learned

Boeing (BA) is under the spotlight on Capitol Hill today as whistleblowers testify before Senate subcommittees, including quality engineer Sam Salehpour who raised alarm bells over alleged unsafe manufacturing procedures surrounding Boeing's 787 Dreamliner.

Yahoo Finance Legal Reporter Alexis Keenan breaks down the whistleblower testimonies.

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This post was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Meanwhile Boeing is front and center on Capitol Hill today safety officials and whistleblowers testifying about safety issues with Boeing aircraft in separate hearings. One of those whistleblowers, Sam Salehpour, a quality engineer spoke out on what he saw during assembly and warned about the implications.

SAM SALEHPOUR: I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align. I call it the Tarzan effect. They are using significant excessive force to squash the gaps before you measure it. If you squash in the gap before you measure it, you don't know what you're getting. If you get the gap measured falsely, you are not going to shim it properly. And it's a danger to the airplane. It's very important. Boeing has put out reports that they say that they can lose almost 80% of the airplane life cycle if we don't follow these protocols--

JULIE HYMAN: Our Alexis Keenan has been following the hearings and is here with more. So that was just one clip that seemed alarming. What's your impression overall of what we've heard so far?

ALEXIS KEENAN: So we had a couple of hearings today and this one was with Salehpour and other whistleblowers who had been connected to the 737 Max crashes. They are sounding an alarm. Salehpour here saying that, he raised to the vice president of engineering level at Boeing. That's Lisa Fall. He said that he wrote multiple memos telling management about these connection concerns. He said he's been a quality engineer for a long time. He's a 40 year engineer. Not always at Boeing. But has spent several years in this quality department.

And he said that the connections between the parts of the fuselage of the 787 dreamliner that they don't fit together properly because the management and the company was putting together the aircraft in a way that didn't shim those pieces first. Didn't make the connections first, instead forcing them together with what he says was tremendous force. And therefore getting inaccurate readings about how it needs to deal with the aircraft as it goes through the production line and finishes being assembled.

Now Senator Hawley went on to ask, well, are these planes safe? Because in an interview with NBC, yesterday Salehpour said that these planes should be grounded worldwide. And his answer to Senator Hawley was well, it's like an earthquake. It's going to happen at some point. You just don't know when. He also likened it to a paper clip if you manipulate it and you bend it around. That at some point, it's not going to break right away necessarily, but at some point, it's going to have a compromise there. Also Boeing on the other hand, saying that those claims are inaccurate.

They said that these issues present no safety concerns. They said that they simulated 165,000 takeoffs and landings. So the plane getting pressurized and decon pressurized 165,000 times in a testing environment. And they said they found no fatigue from those tests. Now Salehpour contends during this hearing that those are muddied waters. That data is being represented in a way that's he didn't use the word dishonest. But he said the way that Boeing is representing, it is not quite accurate.

Because he said that the test plane, now the test plane was manufactured in 2010. That Boeing has undergone different manufacturing procedures for the 787 dreamliner since then. But Boeing says, well, that 2010 environment for that aircraft, that was adequate. They say that the 980 planes that are now in service. That those were made using the same standards.

JULIE HYMAN: Just to make sure I understand. They just tested the one plane with all those pressurization and depressurization. They're not testing every single plane that they make with those criteria?

ALEXIS KEENAN: For the testing aircraft, however, there's maintenance that goes on in the years following delivery to customers. So Boeing also contends that there have not been fatigue problems with the planes that have undergone their regular service requirements. Also the separate hearing, you have to bring that in to understand the full context of went on today.

JOSH LIPTON: We're talking about this, this is another separate from Boeing's safety culture. I think we have a shot from that if we can play it.

ALEXIS KEENAN: Yeah. Go ahead.

JAVIER DE LUIS: They hear safety is our number one priority. But what they see is that 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.

ALEXIS KEENAN: Now De Luis, the MIT aviation engineer that you saw there. He and others on the panel now, they're part of a group within the FAA that oversees its oversight of Boeing. So what they said is after a long study, they found retaliation concerns that Boeing employees were worried about bringing their concerns about aircraft manufacturing forward to management. Also talking about the fact that there's no empowerment by those that are on the production line.

Those are the mechanics to stop the production line that things are dealt with after the fact and not right away. So they said that should change. But they had a whole host of recommendations, including, involving pilots early in the conversation, early in the design of these aircraft in order to prevent these types of problems that Boeing now has had many of from happening.

JULIE HYMAN: Wow, fascinating stuff. Alexis, thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

JOSH LIPTON: Thanks Alexis.