Boeing retaliated against its own engineers working for FAA, union says

Boeing said it is “looking into the union’s requests” but added that investigations into interference claims are typically confidential.

“Providing the report to any party outside the FAA would be a departure from our standard practice, ” Boeing said.

Eyes of the FAA

More than 1,000 engineers inside Boeing are authorized to act as the FAA’s eyes in overseeing work. They are legally required to have “a commitment to safety above all other priorities” and so must be independent and free of interference from management concerns about added cost and schedule delays.

But after the two deadly 737 Max crashes five years ago, some of these engineers alleged management during the Max’s development had interfered to limit safety testing.

That coupled with the failure of this internal oversight organization to flag the obvious flaws in the new flight control software that led to the crashes raised serious doubts about Boeing’s ability to certify its own work.

Congress subsequently began to reverse the yearslong trend of delegating more of the FAA’s safety oversight to Boeing itself.

After a chain of quality lapses last year and then the fuselage panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max in January, Boeing leadership said it would revamp its safety reporting systems and has repeatedly insisted that all employees can raise safety concerns without fear of retaliation.

In February, the report of an FAA-appointed panel of independent aviation experts flagged concerns that the employees who represent the FAA fear raising safety issues because Boeing’s internal safety reporting systems fails to ensure “open communication and non-retaliation.”

The findings of that report were highlighted just last week in a hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. One finding was that some employees did not receive a raise they had been expecting after bringing up safety concerns.

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