New Boeing whistleblower raises maintenance practice concerns

Boeing (BA) faces fresh controversy as a whistleblower has made new allegations. The ex-Spirit AeroSystems (SPR) employee claims to have witnessed manufacturing and maintenance malpractice while at the company, specifically related to the 787 jet's forward pressure bulkhead, a component responsible for maintaining cabin pressure.

In a statement, Boeing says "A subcontractor’s employee previously reported concerns to us that we thoroughly investigated as we take seriously any safety-related matter. Engineering analysis determined that the issues raised did not present a safety concern and were addressed. We are reviewing the documents released today and will thoroughly investigate any new claim. We are not involved in personnel decisions of subcontractors.”

Yahoo Finance's Seana Smith and Madison Mills break down the details.

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This post was written by Angel Smith

Editor's note: This post was edited to add Boeing's statement.

Video transcript

Boeing is reportedly facing new whistleblower claims a former mechanic allegedly observing some substandard manufacturing and maintenance practices on the 780 seven's forward pressure bulkhead.

That's that dome shaped piece located in the jets nose and it's critical for maintaining cabin pressure.

Now, that former employee alleged that he was fired after raising those concerns.

He was fired by Spirit which he was working on this Spirit aircraft at Boeing hangar in Washington when this occurred.

That was and then later at a spirit supplier, he says that basically they had to put fasteners into that dome that we were talking about and holes were drilled that made the fasteners not quite fit into those holes.

So he raised those concerns.

He said by the way that those changes were made without Boeing's permission.

According to his statement, he then moving forward says that he was fired from Spirit after reporting those issues, he was fired in March of this year.

So this is relatively recent Boeing then saying that they had addressed some of those concerns.

So it's just the latest example though of this continued challenge, Shana for Boeing with regards to the safety concerns from whistleblowers it certainly is.

And obviously, it's very worrisome here in spirit to a statement to Bloomberg, I believe, saying that our leadership is aware of the allegations and looking into the matter, we encourage all spirit employees with concerns to come forward, say in knowing they will be protected.

But you're exactly right.

What this points to or what this follows has been a series of whistleblower complaints pointed at Boeing pointed at its suppliers over some of the manufacturing processes that have been in place at the plane manufacturer here.

For quite some time, the FAA has received more than 11 times as many Boeing whistleblower reports in the first five months of this year compared to all of 2023.

So that really puts that in perspective here.

The increase obviously coming after that fuselage blew off a plane in mid flight back in the beginning of the year in January here.

So we do have this renewed focus on Boeing right now.

We are still seeing shares up just around nine tons of a percent.

Obviously, the stock has been under a tremendous amount of pressure going back to that uh incident in mid January here.

So again, lots of questions from analysts just about what exactly the future looks like under for Boeing, they will be under a new CEO in the new year.

So exactly what management looks like what some of the issues, um how they are going to address some of the issues that have been raised over the last five or six months.

Of course, is a critical question here at this point.

And we know that we've heard from Boeing's uh current Ceo Dave Calhoun saying that they are doing all they can to address some of the issues coming out saying that they are being proactive in trying to address some of those complaints.

But again, we will see how this all shakes out uh for Boeing in the end.