Senator Hassan Highlights Boeing’s Poor Safety Culture at Senate Hearing

WASHINGTON – Earlier today, U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) asked whistleblowers and experts about lapses in Boeing’s safety culture at a Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing.

To watch Senator Hassan’s hearing questions, click here.

Senator Hassan asked whistleblower Sam Salehpour, a quality engineer at Boeing, about his experience raising safety concerns at Boeing. Mr. Salehpour said that his supervisor prevented him from documenting concerns or sending concerns to subject matter experts. Mr. Salehpour also said that some of his colleagues at Boeing who tried adding safety inspection processes were accused of trying to stop production by management. As a result, he stated that Boeing employees are discouraged from coming forward about safety concerns.

Senator Hassan then asked Joe Jacobsen, a former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) engineer and current Aerospace Engineer and Technical Advisor at the Foundation for Aviation Safety, about his experience at the FAA following Congress mandating reforms to the agency in the Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability (ACSA) Act in 2020. ACSA established more stringent safety standards following the 737 MAX disasters, in which hundreds of people lost their lives in two separate crashes in 2018 and 2019 involving Boeing 737 MAX passenger airliners.

“The attitude from day one was not good at upper levels of the FAA,” said Mr. Jacobsen. “The message that I heard right after ACSA was passed was, ‘we’re already doing all of this.’ So that’s the wrong attitude from day one.” Mr. Jacobsen also called the implementation of ACSA “half-hearted.”

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