A Boeing whistleblower has claimed he often found up to 200 defects on parts being readied for shipping to the US planemaker by its largest supplier, Spirit AeroSystems.
Santiago Paredes worked at Spirit for over a decade at its Wichita facility in Kansas. In an interview with the BBC, he claimed he was nicknamed “showstopper” for slowing down production when he tried to tackle his concerns.
“I was finding a lot of missing fasteners, a lot of bent parts, sometimes even missing parts,” he said, often “anywhere from 50, to 100, 200” on fuselages that were due to be shipped.
Spirit has strongly denied the allegations.
“We are vigorously defending against his claims,” the firm said in a statement.
Boeing and Spirit have faced intense scrutiny since a section of a plane blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight mid-air in January, causing an emergency landing. The incident has resulted in investigations from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and US Department of Justice.
Spirit, whose shares are down nearly 80 per cent this year to date, supplied the door panel which fell off. It said on Tuesday first quarter losses had more than doubled due to schedule changes and quality audits at Boeing.
Parades claimed he was put under pressure to be less scrupulous.
“They always made a fuss about why I was finding it, why I was looking at it… They just wanted the product shipped out. They weren’t focused on the consequences of shipping bad fuselages,” he alleged.
“They were just focused on meeting the quotas, meeting the schedule, meeting the budget… If the numbers looked good, the state of the fuselages didn’t really matter.”
He is the latest in a string of whistleblowers to emerge, who claim production defects aren’t taken seriously at Spirit and Boeing.
Parades told the BBC he would be reluctant to fly on a 737 Max due to his experiences working for Spirit. “I’d never met a lot of people who were scared of flying until I worked [there],” he said.
“And then, being at Spirit, I met a lot of people who were afraid of flying – because they saw how they were building the fuselages.”
Boeing were approached for comment.