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NewsTranscript
00:00 on the direction we're going to take and I want to introduce the witnesses for today's hearing.
00:05 Sam Salipour, current quality engineer at Boeing is a person with four decades
00:15 of aerospace experience including work as an aerospace engineer for a NASA contractor
00:21 and 17 years as an engineer at Boeing.
00:25 In his role at Boeing he monitors production, analyzes defects and develops strategies
00:31 to prevent the kinds of incidents that we've seen from reoccurring.
00:37 Mr. Salipour has come forward to our subcommittee after documenting years
00:42 of safety concerns while working on the 777 and the 787 aircraft.
00:49 Ed Pearson, executive director of the Foundation for Aviation Safety
00:54 and a former Boeing manager.
00:57 Mr. Pearson is a former senior manager and the current executive director
01:02 of the Foundation for Aviation Safety.
01:05 He spent 10 years at Boeing and oversaw teams
01:09 who manufactured Boeing's 737 MAX airplanes.
01:14 Prior to joining Boeing, Mr. Pearson spent over 30 years in the United States Navy.
01:20 I believe you're a graduate of the Naval Academy.
01:24 Joe Jacobson, Mr. Jacobson is a safety and aerospace engineer
01:29 who spent more than 25 years at the FAA.
01:36 He retired in 2021.
01:38 Prior to joining the FAA he was an engineer at Boeing for 11 years.
01:42 He now serves as a technical advisor to the Foundation for Aviation Safety.
01:49 Dr. Sean Puchnicki, he has a PhD, he's a professional practice assistant professor
01:59 for integrated systems engineering at Ohio State University.
02:06 He is also an aviation safety consultant.
02:11 He has served as an aviation accident investigator
02:14 and he's a former commercial airline pilot.
02:18 As is our custom, I will swear you in and then we'll hear your individual testimony
02:25 if you would please rise.
02:27 You swear that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth,
02:35 and nothing but the truth, so help you God.
02:38 Thank you.
02:41 Mr. Salipur, you may begin.
02:44 Thank you.
02:48 Chairman Blumenthal, Ranking Member Johnson,
02:50 and the honorable members of this subcommittee,
02:53 thank you for convening this hearing.
02:55 My name is Sam Salipur and I'm a quality engineer at Boeing.
02:59 I have over 40 years of experience as an engineer.
03:06 I'm not here today because I want to be here.
03:09 I'm here today because I felt that I must come forward
03:12 because I do not want to see another 787,
03:16 I do not want to see 787 or 7777 crash.
03:21 I have serious concerns about the safety of the 787 and 777 aircraft
03:26 and I'm willing to take on professional risk to talk about them.
03:30 First, a little bit about me.
03:32 I came to the United States in 1973 and got a mechanical engineering degree
03:37 from the University of Missouri where Senator Hawley is from.
03:41 After that, I worked for companies that were involved in the space shuttle.
03:45 I had a friend, an engineer that worked on the space shuttle.
03:48 He was always complaining about the quality of the O-rings
03:52 that we had in the space shuttle, the SARA rocket boosters.
03:56 He was scared that they might fail.
03:59 He raised his concerns and he was heard and he wasn't heard.
04:06 Seven brave astronauts, including the teacher in space,
04:10 died when the Challenger O-rings ultimately failed,
04:14 just as he predicted.
04:17 At the moment, I know that if I were ever in a similar situation,
04:22 I would have to come up and speak up.
04:25 I have analyzed Boeing's own data to conclude that the company
04:29 is taking manufacturing shortcuts on the 787 program
04:33 that may significantly reduce the airplane's safety and the life cycle.
04:39 Since 2013, there have been serious issues on the 787 program,
04:45 not properly closing thousands of gaps in its assembly of the fuselage
04:50 on major joints.
04:51 Boeing's standard says that these gaps must be closed,
04:55 usually by a small shim or filler called a shim
04:59 when they exceed 5,000th of an inch.
05:02 This seems very small.
05:04 Boeing's PR team like to call it the width of a human hair
05:09 when you are operating at 35,000 feet.
05:12 Details are that the size of a human hair can be a matter of life and death.
05:19 In a rush to address its bottlenecks in production,
05:22 Boeing hit problems pushing pieces together with excessive force
05:27 to make them appear that the gaps don't exist, even though they exist.
05:32 The gap didn't actually go away,
05:33 and this may result in premature fatigue failure.
05:37 Effectively, they are putting out defective airplanes.
05:40 I respectively-- I repeatedly produced reports for my supervisors
05:46 and Boeing management demonstrating that the gaps in the 787
05:50 not being properly measured or shimmed in two major joints of the 787.
05:55 Evaluating from Boeing-- from the 29 inspected airplane data,
06:01 I found gaps exceeding the specification
06:04 that were not properly addressed 98.7% of the time.
06:09 I want to repeat that. 98.7% of the time,
06:13 the gaps that they were supposed to be shimmed, they were not shimmed.
06:17 The other issue that I found when you have these gaps
06:22 and you drill through them, you get some debris in the stack-ups.
06:25 This is known to be a problem, you know,
06:28 not a good thing for the airplanes by Boeing,
06:31 but Boeing data also, you know, from the inspection of the data,
06:35 shows that the debris ended up in the gaps 80% of the time.
06:40 Again, you know, you have debris in the gaps 80% of the time.
06:46 I want to make clear that I have raised these issues over three years.
06:50 I was ignored. I was told not to create delays.
06:54 I was told, frankly, to shut up.
06:56 At one point, Boeing management got sick of me and raising these issues
07:01 and moved me out of the 787 program into this 777 program.
07:06 On the 777 program, I found problems.
07:09 Again, I found that Boeing started a new process to build the airplane
07:14 without taking into consideration of the design of the airplane
07:18 and how the airplane was designed.
07:20 As a result, I witnessed severe misalignment
07:23 when the planes were assembled.
07:26 Boeing manufacturing used unmeasured and unlimited amount of force
07:31 to correct the misalignment.
07:33 And this also weakens the airplane in the long run.
07:37 I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane
07:42 to get them to align.
07:43 I call it the Tarzan effect, among other improper methods.
07:48 Again, I raised concerns internally.
07:50 I was sidelined. I was told to shut up.
07:52 I received physical threats.
07:55 My boss said, "I would have killed someone who said what you said in a meeting."
08:01 And then, this is not a safety culture where you get threatened
08:06 by bringing issues of safety concerns.
08:09 I hope that your work on this issue signals to Boeing
08:13 that they must make real changes and get back to building their airplane safely.
08:19 I'll be more than happy to answer your questions.
08:22 Thank you very much, Mr. Salapor.
08:24 Thank you.
08:25 Thank you.
08:26 Thank you.
08:27 Thank you.