Boeing 787 employees falsified inspection records; FAA opens probe

The FAA has opened an investigation into Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner after the company disclosed that employees in South Carolina falsified inspection records on work done where the wings are joined to the fuselage body.

Boeing informed the Federal Aviation Administration in April that, despite records indicating completion of required inspections, workers had not performed some of those inspections to confirm adequate bonding and electrical grounding at the 787 wing-to-body join.

“The FAA is investigating whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records,” the federal safety agency said via email.

This is the latest in a long litany of lapses at Boeing that have come to light under the intense scrutiny of the company’s quality oversight since a passenger cabin panel blew out on an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

Boeing said its engineers have established that this newly discovered lapse does not create “an immediate safety of flight issue.”

On April 29, Scott Stocker, 787 vice president and general manager at Boeing’s assembly plant in North Charleston, S.C., sent a message to all employees there telling them that one worker had noticed the required tests at the wing-to-body join were not being done and spoke up about it internally. His manager informed executives of the lapse.

“After receiving the report, we quickly reviewed the matter and learned that several people had been violating Company policies by not performing a required test, but recording the work as having been completed,” Stocker wrote.

“Our engineering team has assessed that this misconduct did not create an immediate safety of flight issue. But it will impact our customers and factory teammates, because the test now needs to be conducted out of sequence on airplanes in the build process,” Stocker added.

Boeing said it is still “determining the full scope of affected airplanes.”

Stocker told employees in his message that Boeing has “zero tolerance for not following processes designed to ensure quality and safety.”

He said Boeing promptly informed the FAA and is “taking swift and serious corrective action with multiple teammates.”

Stocker also praised the employee who first flagged the problem.

“I wanted to personally thank and commend that teammate for doing the right thing,” his message states. “It’s critical that every one of us speak up when we see something that may not look right.”

Stocker’s message concluded by saying that he will “be meeting soon with a number of teams to discuss what we’re doing to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

The FAA said Boeing is inspecting all 787 airplanes still within the production system and must also create a plan to address the in-service fleet.

“As the investigation continues, the FAA will take any necessary action — as always — to ensure the safety of the flying public,” the FAA wrote.

This new 787 quality concern is unrelated to the 787 fuselage gaps described as unsafe in an April congressional hearing by Boeing whistleblower Sam Salehpour.

However, Salehpour’s lawyers Debra Katz and Lisa Banks issued a statement after the news broke criticizing Boeing for “the culture it created that led its workers to falsify records.”

“By reporting an employee’s concerns to the F.A.A., Boeing is now congratulating itself for doing the bare minimum to respond,” the lawyers added.