Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Releases New Details of Boeing's Safety Failure Ahead of Hearing with FAA Administrator

[WASHINGTON, DC] – Today, ahead of a hearing with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Michael Whitaker, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Chair of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), released new details of Boeing’s safety failures revealed in documents PSI has obtained from Boeing and the FAA’s 2024 special audit of 737 MAX production.

“Today, the Subcommittee is releasing a new memorandum that reveals previously non-public information about concerning practices and procedures still taking place at Boeing,” said Blumenthal. “The Subcommittee’s memo reveals that many of Boeing’s employees still feel pressure to prioritize speed over quality, raising serious safety concerns.”

A Majority staff memorandum from Blumenthal to members of the Subcommittee outlining previously non-public information about concerning practices and procedures still taking place at Boeing is available here.

Employees Continue to Feel Pressured to Prioritize Production Speed Over Quality

An internal Boeing survey obtained by the Subcommittee reveals employee concerns that go directly to the heart of whether Boeing’s safety culture has improved in the months since the door plug incident or the years since the two 737 MAX crashes. According to a May 2024 employee survey, Boeing found that less than half of respondents answered favorably to the statement, “Schedule pressures do not cause my team to lower our standards.”

Not only do the survey responses show that machinists still experience pressure to sacrifice quality, the fact that so many respondents perceived schedule pressure at a time when the FAA capped Boeing’s production of the 737 MAX to 38 aircraft per month emphasizes the extent to which schedule pressure may have impacted safety in years past, including in 2018, when Boeing produced up to 52 airplanes per month. A summary of the survey results submitted to the FAA as an exhibit accompanying Boeing’s comprehensive safety plan is available here.

Boeing is Failing to Adequately Train and Equip Manufacturing Personnel

During its audit, FAA conducted multiple interviews with Boeing personnel and recorded 23 examples where employees failed to follow processes or lacked proficiency. The FAA’s special audit findings also show that frontline manufacturing personnel sometimes lacked the tools necessary for a given production task, sometimes leading them to rely on unauthorized and improvised means to perform critical work.

Boeing is Mishandling Nonconforming Parts

Whistleblower reports, FAA enforcement actions, and recent FAA officials’ testimony before the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) indicate that Boeing continues to struggle with systemic mismanagement of nonconforming parts.

The FAA’s review of certain Boeing procedures identified deficiencies that point to more systemic nonconforming part-related problems. For example, the FAA found that at least one procedure for reallocating parts from one aircraft in production to another aircraft production did not require personnel to make sure the part in question was not deemed nonconforming.

Boeing’s Quality Inspections May Not Always Be Performed by Qualified and Independent Personnel

The FAA’s special audit findings revealed ongoing failures to ensure quality inspections are performed consistently by qualified and independent personnel. According to the FAA, under the program called “Verification Optimization,” Boeing assigned quality inspections to manufacturing personnel that, although not part of Boeing’s quality department, received “the equivalent level” of training as quality inspectors—raising questions about the qualifications and independence of individuals performing inspections.

The FAA acknowledged to the Subcommittee that manufacturing personnel inspecting the quality of their own work appeared to pose an inherent conflict of interest.

The full text of the Subcommittee’s March 2024 letter to FAA Administrator Whitaker is available here. Video of the Subcommittee’s June 2024 hearing can be viewed here.

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