A former quality manager of Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems says he was pressured to downplay defects he discovered while inspecting the troubled planes’ fuselages — and that he always felt it was “just a matter of time before something bad happened.”
Santiago Paredes says he saw hundreds of defects daily when conducting final inspections on 737 fuselages at the Spirit AeroSystems factory in Wichita, Kansas, before they were shipped to Boeing.
“If quality mattered, I would still be at Spirit,” Paredes, who quit in 2022, told CBS News. “It was very rare for us to look at a job and not find any defects.”
Paredes recalled how his bosses would pressure him to keep his reports to a minimum — and nicknamed him “Showstopper” because his write-ups on the defects would often delay deliveries.
“They always said they didn’t have time to fix the mistakes,” said Paredes. “They needed to get the planes out.”
In February 2022, Paredes said, his bosses asked him to speed up his inspections by being less specific about issues he was finding with the fuselages, to which Paredes emailed his managers back and said 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,” he said. “If I say yes, I was admitting that I was gonna do something wrong.”
After sending that email, Paredes was demoted from his leadership role. He was later reinstated after filing a complaint with HR, but by then, he’d had enough and resigned by the summer of 2022.
“It takes a toll on you and I was tired of fighting,” said Paredes. “I was tired of trying to do the right thing.”
In his first public interview, Paredes emphasized the many issues found on 737 fuselages — and said there were often similar problems to the aircraft that had a door fly off in the middle of an Alaska Airlines flight at 16,000 feet in the air in January.
“Why’d that happen? Because Spirit let go of a defect that they overlooked because of the pressure that they put on the inspectors,” Paredes said. “If the culture was good, those issues would be addressed, but the culture is not good.”
Paredes said Boeing knew for years that Spirit, which is not affiliated with Spirit Airlines, was delivering defective fuselages.
“It’s a recipe for disaster,” Paredes said. “I said it was just a matter of time before something bad happened.”
Paredes says knowing what he knows about how the aircraft is inspected has made him a hesitant flyer.
“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.”
Paredes, who was cited as “Former Employee 1” in a shareholder lawsuit against Spirit, has alleged “widespread quality failures” at the company, of which he claims their client, Boeing, was aware.
A company spokesperson said that while it is committed to addressing employees’ concerns, Paredes’ allegations were “unfounded.”
“We encourage all Spirit employees with concerns to come forward, safe in knowing they will be protected,” said Spirit spokesman Joe Buccino. “We remain committed to addressing concerns and continuously improving workplace safety standards.”
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, claiming its engineers inspect each fuselage as it comes off the production line in Wichita.
Paredes is not the first to speak out about quality issues on Boeing planes, though two whistleblowers who have spoken out in recent months about their concerns have died under mysterious circumstances.
