‘I want to prevent crashes': When Boeing whistleblower Sam Salehpour warned about ‘catastrophic' event a year ago

Mint

16 hours ago

Air India Plane Crash: The Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad minutes after takeoff was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner – a model that whistleblowers had already been expressing concerns about.
In 2024, Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour's concerns about the 787 Dreamliner jet's design had made US federal authorities launch an investigation into the company, multiple reports from that year say.
He had alleged last year that Boeing used 'shortcuts' in the making of the aircraft model's fuselage.
A year later, an ill-fated Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft of Air India crashed in Ahmedabad, taking away lives of 241 people on board and injuring scores others as it fell on a building full of people. The cause of the plane crash, however, has not been identified yet as authorities continue to investigate the deadly accident.
In his formal complaint to the Federal Aviation Administration, which was made public in April 2024, Sam Salehpour had alleged that the crews that assembled the Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft failed to properly fill small gaps as they joined separately manufactured parts of the fuselage.
While Boeing claimed its 787 aircraft to have 50-year lifespan, this mistake could put more wear on the plane, he alleged. It would mean that the aircraft's lifespan would be shortened, resulting in 'catastrophic events', Salehpour's lawyers had said.
The Air India plane that crashed on Thursday was operating for 11 years.
'I am doing this not because I want Boeing to fail, but because I want it to succeed and prevent crashes from happening,' Salehpour had told reporters last year.
'The truth is Boeing can't keep going the way it is. It needs to do a little bit better, I think,' he added.
The claims that Salehpour had made last year were not entirely new and the FAA had paused Boeing from delivering the Dreamliner aircraft for nearly two years starting 2021 while it was investigating possible shortcomings.
Boeing had claimed it 'incorporated the join inspection and verification activity' into its production system.
But Salehpour's attorneys said that the FAA was surprised to see through his complaint that the shortcomings were still an issue.
'I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align,' Salehpour said.
'By jumping up and down, you're deforming parts so that the holes align temporarily … and that's not how you build an airplane.'