On December 13, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation released a report detailing allegations made by seven whistleblowers from within the aerospace industry. The whistleblowers, who include a Boeing senior engineer and a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) engineer, claim that there are fundamental problems with safety oversight in the aerospace industry.
Many of the allegations concern the Boeing 737 MAX, the plane involved in two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019. Since those tragedies, multiple whistleblowers, including former Boeing senior manager Ed Pierson, spoke to the Senate Committee about safety shortcomings at both Boeing and the FAA. These concerns helped shape the FAA Accountability Enhancement Act, a bill passed in December 2020 to provide significant enhancements to accountability, safety, and whistleblower protection within the aviation industry. The newly released Senate whistleblower report details how problems identified following the 737 MAX crashes continue to persist.
In the report, whistleblowers allege that the FAA’s certification process of airplanes, including the 737 MAX, was weakened by “undue pressure on line engineers and
production staff.” For example, the report claims that there were “scheduling pressures on production staff in the Boeing 787 program, which led to quality issues in the supply chain—problems that still persist. Boeing production staff experienced ‘relentless’ schedule pressure in the 737 MAX...
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