FAA investigating Boeing 787 Dreamliner inspections

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has launched an investigation into the Boeing 787 Dreamliner after the company reported alleged “misconduct” by some employees who may have falsely reported performing key tests during production.

The FAA said in a statement that “the company voluntarily informed us in April that it may not have completed required inspections to confirm adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage on certain 787 Dreamliner airplanes.”

The agency also said it’s looking into “whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records,” and that Boeing is “reinspecting all 787 airplanes still within the production system.”

When asked for comment, a Boeing spokesperson provided an email dated April 29 from Scott Stocker, who heads the 787 program, to employees in South Carolina who assemble the Dreamliner.

“We quickly reviewed the matter and learned that several people had been violating Company policies by not performing a required test, but recording the work as having been completed,” Stocker wrote in the email.

Boeing is “taking swift and serious corrective action with multiple” employees and meeting with “a number of teams to discuss what we’re doing to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” Stocker added, thanking the teammate who came forward.

The news comes on the heels of whistleblower testimony regarding gaps in the 787 manufacturing process before a Senate subcommittee last month. Sam Salehpour, a quality engineer at Boeing, detailed allegations of harassment and threats by higher ups at Boeing after he raised concerns that portions of the 787 Dreamliner’s fuselage were not properly fused together, which he said could cause the plane to blow apart midair prematurely.

Beoing CEO Dave Calhoun was invited to testify alongside the whistleblower, but did not attend the hearing.

Following the hearing, a Boeing spokesperson told The Hill the company is “fully confident in the safety and durability of the 787 Dreamliner” and “extensive and rigorous testing of the fuselage and heavy maintenance checks of nearly 700 in-service airplanes to date have found zero evidence of airframe fatigue.”

The 787 Dreamliner drama compounds a high-profile accident involving one of the company’s 737 Max 9 planes in January. Shortly after an Alaskan Airlines flight took off on Jan. 5, the door plug blew off, prompting multiple investigations by the FAA, the Justice Department and lawmakers.

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