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DOJ probe expands beyond Boeing 737 Max, includes 787 Dreamliner

Boeing employees walk the new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner toward the delivery ramp area at the company's facility in South Carolina after conducting its first test flight on Friday, March 31, 2017, at Charleston International Airport in North Charleston, S.C. (Mic Smith / AP)
By Steve Miletich Seattle Times

Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed records from Boeing relating to the production of the 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina, where there have been allegations of shoddy work, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.

The subpoena was issued by the Department of Justice, the sources said. DOJ is also conducting a criminal investigation into the certification and design of the 737 Max after two deadly crashes of that jetliner.

The 787 subpoena significantly widens the scope of the DOJ’s scrutiny of safety issues at Boeing.

The two sources who revealed the subpoena spoke on condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of the inquiries.

A third source said a handful of subpoenas were issued in early June to individual employees at Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner production plant in North Charleston, South Carolina.

DOJ spokesman Peter Carr in Washington, D.C., declined to comment Friday. A Boeing spokesman said, “We don’t comment on legal matters.”

It wasn’t clear if the subpoena served on the company was issued by the same prosecutors overseeing the 737 Max investigation. But the third source, also speaking on condition of anonymity because of the confidentiality of the inquiries, said the subpoenas to employees at the South Carolina plant came from the “same group” of prosecutors involved in the 737 Max investigation, including DOJ trial attorneys Cory Jacobs and Carol Sipperly in the Fraud Section.

Boeing divides its Dreamliner production between the South Carolina assembly plant, which rolled out its first plane in 2012, and the sprawling Everett facility where it has built jets for decades. The 737 Max is built in Renton.

Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., have been looking into the development of the 737 Max, including a new flight-safety control system known as MCAS, after one crash on Oct. 29 off Indonesia and another in Ethiopia on March 10. Those disasters killed 346 people and led to worldwide grounding of the plane.

The grand jury investigation into the Max has been cloaked in secrecy, but some of the Justice Department’s activities have become known as prosecutors issued subpoenas for documents. The Department of Transportation’s Inspector General and the FBI are working with the DOJ.

A Seattle Times story in March detailed how Federal Aviation Administration managers pushed its engineers to delegate more of the certification process for the 737 Max to Boeing itself. The Times story also detailed flaws in an original safety analysis that Boeing delivered to the FAA.

Allegations relating to the 787 Dreamliner have centered on shoddy work and cutting corners at the company’s South Carolina plant.