Another Boeing whistleblower, former quality manager Santiago Paredes, said he was pressured to routinely hide errors when he worked at its supplier, Spirit AeroSystems. This comes as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) launched an investigation Monday into Boeing after it reported that employees of its South Carolina plant falsified inspection records on 787 planes.
Paredas, speaking to CBS News, said he always felt it was “just a matter of time before something bad happened.” Paredes claims he saw hundreds of defects per day while he was tasked with the final round of inspections on 737 fuselages at the Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas.
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“If quality mattered, I would still be at Spirit,” added Paredas, who quit in 2022. “It was very rare for us to look at a job and not find any defects. […] They always said they didn’t have time to fix the mistakes […] They needed to get the planes out.”
The leader of the 787 program, Scott Stocker, emailed Boeing’s South Carolina employees on April 29th explaining that a staff member observed an “irregularity” during a test of a crucial joint piece. “After receiving the report, we quickly reviewed the matter and learned that several people had been violating Company policies by not performing a required test, but recording the work as having been completed,” Stocker said.
Boeing then notified the FAA and is allegedly taking “swift and serious corrective action with multiple teammates,” according to Stocker.
No planes have been retired from service, but the added testing will slow down the delivery of new planes, which are still being assembled in North Charleston, South Carolina. The FAA has also mandated that Boeing create a strategy to address the aircraft that are currently in use. The 787, a two-aisle plane, is mainly used for international flights.
“The company voluntarily informed us in April that it may not have completed required inspections to confirm adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage on certain 787 Dreamliner airplanes,” the FAA said in a written statement. “The FAA is investigating whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records.”
Shane Devine is a writer covering politics and business for VT and a regular guest on The Unusual Suspects. Follow Shane’s work here.
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