The U.S. aviation authority is investigating whether embattled aviation giant Boeing completed required inspections on its long-haul 787 Dreamliner aircraft and whether employees falsified records, officials said Monday.
The issue centers on whether Boeing undertook required inspections to "confirm adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage on certain 787 Dreamliner airplanes," the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in an email.
The FAA said it opened the investigation after Boeing notified it that the company may not have completed the required inspections, which are needed to ensure a safe and functional electrical flow between aircraft components.
Boeing claimed its engineers have determined that misconduct did not create "an immediate safety of flight issue."
In an email to Boeing's South Carolina employees on April 29, Scott Stocker, who leads the 787 program, said a worker observed an "irregularity" in a required test of the wing-to-body join and reported it to his manager.
"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.
Boeing notified the FAA and is taking "swift and serious corrective action with multiple teammates," Stocker said.
No planes have been taken out of service, but performing the test out of order on planes will slow the delivery of jets still being built at the final assembly plant in North Charleston, South Carolina.
The FAA said that Boeing must also create a plan to address planes that are already flying.
The 787 is a two-aisle plane that debuted in 2011 and is used mostly for long international flights.
"The company voluntarily informed us in April that it may not have completed required inspections to confirm adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage on certain 787 Dreamliner airplanes," the FAA said in a written statement.
"The FAA is investigating whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records."
The probe adds to the litany of issues facing Boeing in the aftermath of a near-catastrophic Alaska Airlines flight in January in which a panel on the fuselage blew out.
The company has been under intense pressure since a door plug blew out of a Boeing 737 Max during the flight, leaving a gaping hole in the plane. The accident halted the progress that Boeing seemed to be making while recovering from two deadly crashes of Max jets in 2018 and 2019.
Those crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, which killed 346 people, are back in the spotlight, too. The families of some of the victims have pushed the U.S. Justice Department to revive a criminal fraud charge against the company by determining that Boeing's continued lapses violated the terms of a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement.
In April, a Boeing whistleblower, Sam Salehpour, testified at a congressional hearing that the company had taken manufacturing shortcuts to turn out 787s as quickly as possible; his allegations were not directly related to those the company disclosed to the FAA last month. The company rejected Salehpour’s claims.
In his email, Stocker praised the worker who came forward to report what he saw: "I wanted to personally thank and commend that teammate for doing the right thing. Every one of us must speak up when we see something that may not look right or needs attention."
Separately, the long-awaited first crewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft was postponed and will be no earlier than Friday, NASA said. The planned launch on Monday was halted over a fault with the Atlas V rocket that will carry the new capsule into orbit.
Board under scrutiny
Safety experts have said the problems at Boeing suggest significant safety culture issues that will not be turned around quickly.
Industry watchers are waiting for more clues about the future leadership of Boeing after Chief Executive Dave Calhoun said he will step down at the end of the year.
Glass Lewis, the proxy advisory firm, last week urged investors to vote against Calhoun's reelection to the board and two other board members who lead the audit and aerospace safety committees.
The move is needed "to strongly signal dissatisfaction with the company's oversight of its safety culture and its efforts to transform said culture, which, in our view, have not progressed quickly enough to a level that sufficiently mitigates shareholder concern when safety incidents occur, as evidenced by the Alaska accident," Glass Lewis said in a note.