Another whistleblower has gone public with allegations of being pressured to downplay quality-control issues involving Boeing passenger planes — and called the situation a "recipe for disaster."
In interviews with CBS and the BBC, Santiago Paredes said he often found as many as 200 defects on fuselages built for Boeing when he worked as an inspector at a Spirit AeroSystems factory in Wichita, Kansas, from 2010 to 2022.
"I was finding a lot of missing fasteners, a lot of bent parts, sometimes even missing parts," he said.
Paredes said he was pressured to be less meticulous by bosses who nicknamed him "Showstopper" because he would delay deliveries to Boeing.
"It's a recipe for disaster," Paredes alleged. "I said it was just a matter of time before something bad happened."
Paredes said he inspected fuselages for Boeing's 737 model and often found problems in the same area where a door panel blew off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 midflight in January.
Paredes' CBS interview aired one day before the Associated Press reported that a 737 caught fire and skidded off a runway in Dakar, Senegal, injuring the pilot and nine others.
"Working at Spirit, I almost grew a fear of flying," he said. "Knowing what I know about the 737, it makes me very uncomfortable when I fly on one of them."
A spokesperson for Spirit AeroSystems, which isn't affiliated with Spirit Airlines, said it was "committed to addressing concerns and continuously improving workplace safety standards," and encouraged "employees with concerns to come forward, safe in knowing they will be protected."
A Boeing spokesperson said the company has long had a team that finds and fixes defects in Spirit fuselages before they're assembled into airplanes at Boeing's factory in Renton, Washington.
Since March, Boeing engineers have also been inspecting each Spirit fuselage as it rolls off the assembly line in Kansas, the spokesperson said.
Last month, former Boeing safety inspector Sam Salehpour told the New York Times that the fuselages of Boeing's 787 airplane, known as the "Dreamliner," were improperly assembled and could break apart midflight after thousands of trips.
During April 17 testimony before a Senate subcommittee, Salehpour also said he was harassed and threatened for raising concerns and was "told not to create delays."
Boeing has called his allegations "inaccurate" and said they didn't "represent the comprehensive work Boeing has done to ensure the quality and long-term safety of the aircraft."
"We know we have more work to do and we are taking action across our company," the company said in a statement after the hearing.
Two previous Boeing whistleblowers have died in the last two months, raising concerns among some observers, but no wrongdoing has been linked to their deaths by reported natural causes.
