Boeing CEO to face congressional grilling as new whistleblower claims emerge

Boeing CEO David Calhoun is expected to face a congressional grilling on Tuesday in his first appearance before lawmakers since a panel burst of a 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight in January. Calhoun will tell the Senate investigations subcommittee that the culture is “far from perfect” — just as two new whistleblowers have emerged.

According to prepared remarks shared by Boeing ahead of the hearing at 2 p.m. Eastern, Calhoun said the company is “committed to ensuring that every employee feels empowered to speak up if there is a problem” and emphasized that Boeing is working to improve “the transparency and accountability, while elevating employee engagement.”

On Tuesday, the Senate subcommittee released information about two recently surfaced whistleblowers. One of them, current Boeing employee Sam Mohawk, alleges that “Boeing is improperly documenting, tracking and storing damaged or out-of-spec parts, and that these parts are likely being installed on airplanes,” according to the statement.

He also claims his supervisors told him to withhold evidence from the Federal Aviation Administration, according to the Senate subcommittee.

The second whistleblower, who is anonymous, alleged to the subcommittee that Boeing has made efforts to get rid of quality inspections, instead relying on workers to inspect their own work and that of their co-workers.

“This is a culture that continues to prioritize profits, push boundaries and disregard its workers,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat and Boeing critic who also chairs the subcommittee, in a statement Tuesday. “A culture where those who speak out are silenced and marginalized while blame is pushed to the factory floor.”

In a statement to CBS News, Boeing said it received information about the new whistleblowers on Monday night and is reviewing their allegations. “We continually encourage employees to report all concerns as our priority is to ensure the safety of our aircraft and the flying public,” the company said.

Boeing earlier this year denied allegations that it had reduced the number of safety inspectors.

“In January 2019, a senior quality executive at Boeing counted The Seattle Times reported that the company planned to reduce inspector roles in its Quality organization by 900 people and reform how it conducts quality checks as it integrates technology and monitoring into the secondary inspection process. However, Boeing has not reduced these inspector roles, has increased our quality team, and has significantly increased the number of inspections per airplane since 2019,” the company said in a statement at the time.

Whistleblower claims

On a Senate Report Regarding the whistleblower allegations, Mohawk alleges that when Boeing restarted production of the 737 Max after two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019, there was “a 300% increase” in reports about parts that did not meet the manufacturer’s standards.

Although hundreds of nonconforming parts were to be removed from production and monitored closely, “Mohawk feared that nonconforming parts were being installed on the 737s and this could lead to a catastrophic event,” the report states.

The document says Mohawk also claims that when Boeing learned of a pending FAA inspection last June, many parts were moved to another location to “intentionally hide improperly stored parts from the FAA.”

In April, Boeing Whistleblowersincluding Sam Salehpour, the company’s quality engineer, testified to lawmakers.

“Despite what Boeing employees publicly state, there is no safety culture at Boeing, and employees like me who speak out about defects in their production activities and lack of quality control are ignored, sidelined, threatened, marginalized and worse ,” he told members of an investigative panel of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Boeing denied Salehpour’s allegations and defended the safety of its planes, including the Dreamliner.

Deadly Boeing Max crashes

No one was seriously injured in the Alaska Airlines incident, but the incident has raised new concerns about the company’s best-selling commercial aircraft. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are conducting separate investigations.

“From the beginning, we have taken responsibility and cooperated transparently with the NTSB and FAA,” Calhoun said in prepared remarks for the hearing. He defended the company safety culture. “We are taking comprehensive measures today to strengthen safety and quality.”

Blumenthal has heard this before, when Boeing was reeling from deadly Max crashes in 2018 in Indonesia and 2019 in Ethiopia.

“Five years ago, Boeing made a promise to review its safety practices and culture. That promise turned out to be empty and the American people deserve an explanation,” Blumenthal said when announced the hearing. He called Calhoun’s testimony a necessary step for Boeing to regain public trust.

Calhoun’s appearance was also scheduled to take place as the Department of Justice considers whether to sue Boeing for violating the terms of a settlement following the fatal crashes.

Calhoun will step down by the end of this year when a new CEO is named.

—With reporting by Kris Van Cleave and the Associated Press.