The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating claims by a Boeing engineer that parts of the 787 Dreamliner’s fuselage are not properly fastened together and could break in flight after thousands of trips.
The engineer, Sam Salehpour, who worked on the plane, explained his allegations in interviews with the New York Times and in documents sent to the FAA. An agency spokesman confirmed it was looking into the allegations but declined to comment.
Mr. Salehpour, whose resume says he has worked at Boeing for more than a decade, said the problems arose from changes in the way the huge parts were placed and fastened together on the assembly line. The plane’s fuselage comes in several pieces, all from different manufacturers, and they don’t have exactly the same shape where they fit together, he said.
Boeing admitted that these manufacturing changes were made, but a company spokesman, Paul Lewis, said there was “no effect on the durability or safe longevity of the airframe.”
Mr Lewis said Boeing had done extensive testing of the Dreamliner and had “determined that this is not an immediate flight safety issue”.
“Our engineers are completing complex analysis to determine if there may be a long-term fatigue concern for the fleet in any area of the airplane,” Mr. Lewis said. “This will not be a problem for the in-service fleet for many years to come, if ever, and we are not rushing the team to ensure the analysis is complete.”
In a later statement, Boeing said it was “completely confident in the 787 Dreamliner,” adding that “these claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate and do not represent the comprehensive work Boeing has done to ensure the quality and the long-term safety of the aircraft”.
Mr. Salehpour’s claims add another element to the intense scrutiny Boeing has faced since a door panel blew off a 737 Max jet during an Alaska Airlines flight in early January, raising questions about the company’s manufacturing practices. The plane maker has since announced a leadership overhaul and the Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation.
Mr. Salehpour’s concerns are about to be aired on Capitol Hill. Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on investigations, plans to hold a hearing with Mr. Salehpour on April 17. Mr. Blumenthal said he wanted the public to hear the engineer firsthand.
“Repeated, shocking allegations about Boeing’s manufacturing failures point to an appalling absence of safety culture and practices — where profit takes precedence over everything else,” Mr. Blumenthal said in a statement.
The Dreamliner is a wide-body aircraft that is more fuel efficient than many other long-haul aircraft, in part due to its lightweight composite construction. First delivered in 2011, the twin-aisle plane racked up orders for Boeing and created headaches for the company.
For years, the plane maker has been dealing with a number of issues with the jet, including battery problems that led to the temporary grounding of 787s around the world and quality concerns that recently caused a widespread halt in deliveries.
Boeing also faced a number of problems at its South Carolina plant, where the Dreamliner is made. A prominent Boeing whistleblower who raised concerns about manufacturing practices at the plant, John Barnett, was found dead last month of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The Dreamliner pioneered the use of large amounts of so-called composite materials instead of traditional metal to build the plane, including large parts such as the fuselage, as the fuselage is known. Often made with a combination of materials such as carbon and fiberglass, composites are lighter than metals but, as comparatively newer materials, less is known about how they hold up to the long-term stresses of flight. These stresses create what engineers call fatigue, which can compromise safety if it causes the material to fail.
Mr. Salehpour said he was repeatedly retaliated against for raising concerns about shortcuts he believed Boeing was taking to join Dreamliner fuselage pieces.
Debra S. Katz, Mr. Salehpour’s lawyer, said her client raised his concerns with supervisors and tried to discuss them in safety meetings, but that company officials would not listen. Instead, he said Mr. Salehpour was silenced and transferred to work on another wide-body aircraft, the 777. Mr. Salehpour said that after his transfer, he found additional problems with the way Boeing was assembling its fuselage 777.
“This is the culture that Boeing has allowed to exist,” Ms. Katz said. “This is a culture that prioritizes the production of airplanes and moves them away even when there are serious concerns about the structural integrity of those airplanes and their manufacturing process.”
In its statement, Boeing said it encouraged its workers to “speak up when problems arise” and that retaliation is “strictly prohibited.”
The FAA interviewed Mr. Salehpour on Friday, Ms. Katz said. In response to questions about the Dreamliner, Mike Whitaker, the agency’s administrator, reiterated that the regulator was taking a hard line against Boeing after the Alaska Airlines incident.
“This will not be back to business as usual for Boeing,” Mr. Whitaker said in a statement. “They must commit to real and deep improvements. Making fundamental changes will require a sustained effort from Boeing’s leadership, and we will hold them accountable every step of the way.”
Mr. Salehpour said the shortcuts he believed Boeing were taking resulted in excessive force being applied to narrow unwanted gaps in the assembly that connects the pieces of the Dreamliner’s fuselage. He said the force led to distortion in the composite, which he said could increase the effects of fatigue and lead to premature failure of the composite.
John Cox, a former airline pilot who runs a safety consulting firm, said that while composites were more tolerant of excessive force than metals, it was harder to see that composites had been stressed to the point of failure. “They just hit,” he said.
“Catastrophic separation in flight, yes, is a theoretical possibility,” Mr Cox said. “That’s why you’d want to do the tests to rule that out.”
Boeing’s tests are an appropriate step, Mr. Cox said, because “if the degradation goes far enough, that could potentially lead to a catastrophic failure.”
Kitty Bennett contributed to the research.
