Senate Grandstanding on Boeing Won’t Make Your Flight Safer
The planemaker doesn’t need a growing chorus of naysayers to solve its well-detailed problems, whether or not they have been self-inflicted.
Sam Salehpour, a longtime Boeing employee, expressed concerns about the 787 Dreamliner.
Photographer: Drew Angerer/AFP/Getty Images
Members of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations underscored at a hearing on Wednesday that they did not want to stoke panic about planes made by Boeing Co., then almost uniformly expressed urgent concern about the public’s safety aboard the company’s jets.
“There are real people at risk getting on airlines right now,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the panel’s chairman. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin probably summed up the day’s attitude best: “What I don’t want this committee to do is to scare the you-know-what out of the American public. In the end, I want the public to be confident in getting on an airplane and experiencing air travel. But I have to admit this testimony is more than troubling.’’