US investigating how Boeing treats safety-related employees

A small group of Boeing engineers who perform key safety duties are concerned about their ability to operate without regulatory pressure, and their comments are prompting federal regulators to take a broader view of the company’s safety culture.

The employees are replaced to approve safety assessments and perform other duties for the Federal Aviation Administration, making their independence from corporate pressures critical.

According to a letter from the FAA, one of the employees said, I had to sit down with a manager and explain why I can’t approve something. The employee indicated that the company was looking for another employee in the technical unit.

Another employee reported consternation among managers when engineers discover flaws in component design, which can cause delays in aircraft delivery.

The FAA’s first investigation ran from May to July. An FAA official described it in an Aug. 19 letter to Boeing’s leader in safety and aircraft certification. The Associated Press received a copy of the letter, first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

We take these matters very seriously and are continuously working to improve the processes we have in place to ensure the independence of employees working on behalf of the FAA, said Boeing spokeswoman Jessica Kowal. She said those employees should be given the same respect and respect shown to FAA personnel.

The FAA surveyed 32 of the approximately 1,400 Boeing employees who work on behalf of the FAAs. A third of those surveyed expressed concern. The FAA said in the letter to Chicago-based Boeing that it will follow up by investigating all employees in the unit.

The FAA investigation raises further questions about a long-standing practice of relying on aircraft manufacturer employees to perform safety-related work, including the analysis of critical aircraft systems. The policy is supposed to make use of the specialized knowledge of the employees, and the companies are supposed to empower those employees to perform the safety-related functions without interference.

However, Boeing findings show that the environment does not support worker independence, Ian Won, an FAA official who oversees Boeing, wrote in the letter to the company.

The FAA’s policy of relying on industry employee safety assessments, called “organization designation authorization,” was under intense scrutiny after two fatal crashes involving the Boeing 737 Max. Investigations found that key figures at the FAA were largely unaware of an automated flight control system that played a role in the crashes.

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