(Bloomberg) -- The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has asked Boeing Co. to make available for an interview a company engineer who filed an internal ethics complaint earlier this year that raised questions about Boeing's safety culture.
The committee earlier this year began investigating the certification of Boeing's 737 Max airliner after two crashes killed a total of 346 people, prompting a worldwide grounding of the company's top-selling jetliner.
In a statement, Oregon Democratic Representative Peter DeFazio, the panel's chairman, said the committee also asked that Boeing ensure the panel had access to the internal complaint.
The complaint, which was reported earlier by the Seattle Times and the New York Times, said that Boeing chose not to equip the 737 Max with certain safety equipment that some employees recommended and might have helped prevent the crashes off the coast of Indonesia and in Ethiopia, according to the newspaper reports.
“These reports certainly add to my concern that production pressures may have impacted safety on the 737 Max, which is exactly why it's so critical we get to the bottom of this,” DeFazio said in the statement. “All of this information is critical to have as we prepare” to question Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg and other senior executives at a hearing later this month, DeFazio added.
Earlier: Boeing CEO's Fate Intertwines With 737 Max as Key Tests Loom
The committee has been reviewing hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and emails from Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration, and was unaware of the ethics complaint until news reports on Wednesday surfaced, DeFazio said.
Boeing, in a statement responding to coverage of the engineer's complaint, said “Safety, quality and integrity are at the core of Boeing's values.”
“Boeing offers its employees a number of channels for raising concerns and complaints and has rigorous processes in place, both to ensure that such complaints receive thorough consideration and to protect the confidentiality of employees who make them,” the company said in the statement.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan Beene in Washington at rbeene@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, John Harney
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