According to a former quality manager for Spirit AeroSystems, which builds most of the 737 Max for Boeing, he was instructed to downplay problems he discovered while inspecting the aircraft’s fuselages.
Santiago Paredes is a brave man.
As BizPac Review reported, the last Spirit AeroSystems whistleblower turned up dead, making him the second Boeing accuser to die under mysterious circumstances since March.
But Paredes has spoken out against Spirit AeroSystems, telling CBS News, “If quality mattered, I would still be at Spirit.”
While working for the Boeing supplier, Paredes said he was finding hundreds of “defects” every day.
“It was very rare for us to look at a job and not find any defects,” he said.
(Video: YouTube)
“For about a decade, Santiago Paredes worked at the end of the production line at the Spirit AeroSystems factory in Wichita, Kansas, doing final inspections on 737 fuselages before they were shipped to Boeing,” CBS News reports.
Paredes routinely found problems “while inspecting the area around the same aircraft door panel that flew off in the middle of an Alaska Airlines flight in January,” according to the outlet.
Ultimately, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that the emergency door plug that flew off during an Alaska Airlines flight had no bolts installed.
“Why’d that happen?” Paredes asked. “Because Spirit let go of a defect that they overlooked because of the pressure that they put on the inspectors.”
“If the culture was good, those issues would be addressed,” he added. “But the culture is not good.”
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“Spirit AeroSystems, not affiliated with Spirit Airlines, was spun off from Boeing nearly 20 years ago,” according to CBS News. “The company has been under scrutiny since the Federal Aviation Administration imposed quality checks and halted production expansion of the 737 Max following the January Alaska Airlines accident.”
What he saw while working at Spirit AeroSystems gave Paredes a case of the flying jitters.
“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.”
To make matters worse, Boeing knew for years that Spirit was delivering defective fuselages, Paredes said.
“It’s a recipe for disaster,” he warned. “I said it was just a matter of time before something bad happened.”
While at Spirit AeroSystems, Paredes said his managers gave him a nickname: “Showstopper.”
It wasn’t exactly a term of endearment. The defects he would write up as needing to be repaired delayed deliveries, prompting his bosses to pressure him to keep his reports of such problems to a minimum.
“Eventually, Paredes says, the pressure got worse beginning in 2018 as Spirit went from producing fuselages in the mid-30s monthly, to more than 50 a month,” according to CBS News.
“They always said they didn’t have time to fix the mistakes,” Paredes recalled. “They needed to get the planes out.”
“In February 2022, Paredes said Spirit bosses asked him to speed up his inspections by being less specific about where exactly he was finding issues with fuselages,” CBS continues. “Paredes emailed his managers, writing the request was ‘unethical’ and put him ‘in a very uncomfortable situation.’”
“I was put in a place where I had, if I say, no, I was gonna get fired,” Paredes told the outlet. “If I say yes, I was admitting that I was gonna do something wrong.”
In response to his email, Paredes was demoted from his position as a team leader. After filing an ethics complaint with the company’s Human Resources department, the company agreed that he had been wrongfully demoted and reinstated him. But the damage had been done. Paredes resigned from the company in the summer of 2022.
“It takes a toll on you and I was tired of fighting,” the whistleblower said. “I was tired of trying to do the right thing.”
Spirit spokesman Joe Buccino said whistleblowers are welcome.
“We encourage all Spirit employees with concerns to come forward, safe in knowing they will be protected,” he said. “We remain committed to addressing concerns and continuously improving workplace safety standards.”
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“A Boeing spokesperson told CBS News the company has long had a team that finds and fixes defects in fuselages built by Spirit AeroSystems as Boeing assembled the planes. The spokesperson said since the beginning of March, Boeing engineers have been inspecting each Spirit fuselage as it rolls off the production line in Wichita,” CBS News reports. “Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said in a recent interview with CNBC the increased oversight in Kansas has reduced the number of fuselages with defects, or what Boeing calls ‘nonconformities,’ arriving at the 737 assembly plant in Washington State by about 80%.”
“The company is currently weighing buying back Spirit AeroSystems to further improve quality. Boeing spun off Spirit, formerly known as Boeing Wichita, in 2005,” the outlet adds. “Boeing maintains the 737 is a safe airplane.”
Paredes remains stoic regarding his safety.
“If something happens to me, I’d rather them hear it from me than not hear it at all,” he said about going public. “My cry out is not a cry out to get somebody in trouble. My cry out is to highlight the defects that they well know are in their factory.”
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Author: Melissa Fine
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