As Boeing looks to restore confidence in its brand amid a flurry of recent safety flubs, more whistleblowers are coming forward with accusations against the company’s safety practices. The latest two whistleblowers told the New York Post that some of the planes being pushed out the door are unfit for flight.
The latest two whistleblowers to make their voices heard are Roy Irvin, a veteran of Boeing, and Santiago Paredes, who worked at Spirit Aerosystems. However, they are just two of at least 20 reported whistleblowers who are hoping to bring about change within Boeing manufacturing.
Irvin worked with 787 Dreamliners from 2011-2017 in Charleston, South Carolina, where he said that he pushed back “almost every day” over safety and quality issues. He said that he had to be “insubordinate” to management because of how many problems he saw with the jets. Irvin noted problems like missing safety devices on hardware, which he said could cause the pilot to lose control of the aircraft.
Paredes, a former production inspector, said he saw hundreds of defects on the production line. He said that he was “horrified,” but was pressured to keep quiet about the issues by management. Paredes said that he saw everything from missing parts to incomplete parts, issues that he said should have been taken care of long before they reached him. Paredes’ job was to look at the finished product before it shipped.
“Everything I was seeing was like a ticking time bomb,” Paredes said.
CBS News reports that Paredes’ bosses allegedly nicknamed him “showstopper” because of his documentation of defects, often delaying deliveries.
A Spirit Aerosystems spokesperson responded to the allegations and said that Spirit “encourages people to come forward with concerns and we’ve made it easier to do that.”
In response to the report, a Boeing spokesperson said that “Boeing takes very seriously any allegation of improper work or unethical behavior.”
“Boeing says they are open to hearing criticisms but in reality, they are not being addressed internally and many are retaliated against for speaking out,” the lawyer representing Paredes and Irvin, among others said.
One whistleblower who recently died, Joshua Dean, claimed he lost his job for speaking out against Boeing safety practices.
