Whistleblower claims Boeing 737 Max parts with ‘serious defects’ sent to firm
A former quality inspector has spoken out on quality issues at Spirit AeroSystems, a supplier to Boeing that builds plane parts for the 737 Max.
Santiago Paredes, who worked at the end of the production line at the Spirit factory in Kansas, claims that he was pressured to downplay problems he found while inspecting the plane’s fuselages, the main body of the aircraft.
Spirit is a major supplier for Boeing and has been facing scrutiny since a door flew off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max plane in January. Since then, the Federal Aviation Administration imposed quality checks and halted production expansion of that model.
An investigation into the January incident found that inspectors had removed a door panel to make repairs but failed to reinstall the panel afterward.
A spokesperson for Spirit said the supplier “strongly disagreed” with the allegations made by Mr Paredes and is “vigorously defending against his claims”.
Former Spirit AeroSystems employee Santiago Paredes (Photo: CBS News)
Mr Paredes said he found problems with the 737 Max planes “every day,” often finding up to 200 defects in parts being readied for shipping to Boeing.
“I was finding a lot of missing fasteners, a lot of bent parts, sometimes even missing parts,” he said in a BBC/CBS interview. “It’s a recipe for disaster. I said it was just a matter of time before something bad happened. “
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He said some of the defects were minor, but others were more serious. “They always made a fuss about why I was finding it, why I was looking at it,” he added.
“They just wanted the product shipped out. They weren’t focused on the consequences of shipping bad fuselages. They were just focused on meeting the quotas, meeting the schedule, meeting the budget.”
Mr Paredes said they didn’t have time to fix the mistakes that he found because they were trying to “get the planes out.”
He often found problems while inspecting the area around the same aircraft door panel that flew off an Alaska Airlines flight in January.
“Working at Spirit, I almost grew a fear of flying,” said Mr Paredes. “Knowing what I know about the 737, it makes me very uncomfortable when I fly on one of them.”
He was nicknamed “showstopper” for frequently halting production out of safety concerns. He blamed the company for fostering a work culture where such concerns are not taken seriously.
Mr Paredes claimed that after he refused to downplay his safety concerns in order to speed up production, he was demoted from his team leadership position in February of 2022. Frustrated, he resigned a few months later.
His lawyers told CBS that at least 10 other whistleblowers have come forward.
One whistleblower who spoke publicly was giving depositions against Boeing when he was found dead in his car in March with a gunshot wound in Charleston, South Carolina, where Boeing has its 787 manufacturing facility. Another whistleblower passed away last month due to a sudden infection. There is no evidence of foul play or any link between the two deaths.
A Boeing spokesperson told CBS News that the company has a team that finds and fixes defects in fuselages built by Spirit AeroSystems as Boeing assembled the planes. The spokesperson said since the beginning of March, Boeing engineers have been inspecting each Spirit fuselage.