The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating claims made by a Boeing engineer who said sections of the 787 Dreamliner’s fuselage were improperly attached and could break mid-flight after thousands of flights.
Engineer Sam Salehpour, who worked on the plane, detailed his allegations in interviews with The New York Times and in documents sent to the FAA. An agency spokesman confirmed it was investigating the allegations but declined to comment on them.
Mr. Salehpour, who worked at Boeing for more than a decade, said the problems stemmed from changes in how the massive sections were fitted and glued together on the assembly line. The plane’s fuselage comes in many pieces, all from different manufacturers, and they are not exactly the same shape in which they fit together, he said.
Boeing acknowledged that manufacturing changes were made, but a spokesman for the company, Paul Lewis, said there was “no impact on the durability or safe longevity of the airframe.”
Mr. Lewis said Boeing conducted extensive testing of the Dreamliner and “determined that this was not an immediate safety of flight 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 won’t be an issue for the in-service fleet for years to come, if at all, and we’re not rushing the team so we can make sure the review is comprehensive.”
In a subsequent statement, Boeing said it was “fully 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 that Boeing has done to ensure the quality and long-term safety of the aircraft.”
Mr. Salehpour’s allegations add another element to the intense scrutiny Boeing has faced since a door panel exploded on a 737 Max jet during an Alaska Airlines flight in early January, raising questions about the company’s manufacturing practices. Since then, the plane maker has announced a leadership overhaul, and the Justice Department has begun a criminal investigation.
Mr. Salehpour’s concerns are set to receive airing on Capitol Hill. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s investigations subcommittee, plans to hold a hearing with Mr. Salehpour on April 17. Mr. Blumenthal said he wants the public to hear directly from the engineer .
“The repeated, shocking allegations about Boeing’s manufacturing failures point to an appalling lack of culture and safety practices – where profit comes before everything else,” said Mr. Blumenthal said in a statement.
The Dreamliner is a wide-body jet that is more fuel-efficient than many other aircraft used for long trips, in part because of its lightweight composite construction. First delivered in 2011, the twin-aisle plane has both racked up orders for Boeing and created headaches for the company.
For years, the plane maker has dealt with a series of issues involving the jet, including battery problems that led to the temporary grounding of 787s around the world and quality concerns that recently causing an extended stoppage in deliveries.
Boeing also faced many problems at its South Carolina plant where the Dreamliner is built. A prominent Boeing whistle-blower 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 was a pioneer in using large amounts of so-called composite materials instead of traditional metal to build the plane, including major sections such as the fuselage, as the body of the aircraft is known. Often made by combining materials such as carbon and glass fibers, composites are lighter than metals but, as relatively newer materials, less is known about how they hold up in the long term. flight stress. Those stresses create what engineers call fatigue, which can compromise safety if it causes the material to break.
Mr. Salehpour said he was repeatedly retaliated against for raising concerns about shortcuts he believed Boeing was taking in assembling pieces of the Dreamliner’s fuselage.
Debra S. Katz, a lawyer for Mr. Salehpour, said her client raised his concerns with supervisors and tried to discuss them in safety meetings, but company officials did not listen. Instead, he said Mr. Salehpour was silenced and moved to work on another wide-body aircraft, the 777. Mr. Salehpour said that after his transfer, he saw additional problems with how Boeing builds the fuselage of the 777.
“This is the culture that Boeing has allowed to exist,” Ms. Katz. “It’s a culture that prioritizes the production of airplanes and pushes them over the line even though there are serious concerns about the structural integrity of those airplanes and their production process.”
In its statement, Boeing said it encouraged its workers to “speak up when issues arise” and that retaliation was “strictly prohibited.”
The FAA interviewed Mr. Salehpour on Friday, Ms. Katz. 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 episode.
“It’s not going back to business as usual for Boeing,” Mr. Whitaker in a statement. “They must commit to real and deep improvements. Making fundamental change will require 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 assembly gaps that join pieces of the Dreamliner’s fuselage. He said the force led to deformation of the composite material, 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, says that while composites are more tolerant of excessive force than metals, it is harder to see that composites have been stressed to the point that they will fail. “They just snapped,” he said.
“The in-flight breakup disaster, yes, that’s a theoretical possibility,” said Mr. Cox. “That’s why you want to do the test to prevent that.”
Boeing’s tests are an appropriate step, Mr. Cox said, because “if the degradation reaches enough, that could lead to a major failure.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
