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Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington pledged a bill responding to the latest Boeing safety mess by year’s end.

Witness Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour gestures while testifying at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. | Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

By Oriana Pawlyk and James Bikales

04/17/2024 07:06 PM EDT

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Two Senate panels looking into safety lapses at Boeing revealed more shocking allegations Wednesday about problems at the planemaker and fresh questions about the Federal Aviation Administration’s capacity to oversee it.

But the dueling hearings produced no suggestions from lawmakers for quick solutions. The chair of the Senate committee that oversees aviation says she wants to act fast with a fresh bill — but doing anything quickly in a Congress mired in disagreement is a tall order.

One hearing included testimony from whistleblowers who said bosses at Boeing had threatened them for calling attention to shoddy safety practices, with one saying the company also sought to cover up information about the flaws.

Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour described a company culture of putting production over safety — which he said included practices such as trying to make parts fit together by jumping on them, which he called the “Tarzan effect.” But the part of his testimony that drew gasps from people in the room was his description of how he says his supervisors reacted to his attempts to report the problems.

“My boss said, ‘I would have killed someone who said what you said in a meeting,’” Salehpour told members of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

In a statement on Wednesday’s hearings, Boeing said retaliation is “strictly prohibited” and that though it has taken “important steps to foster a safety culture that empowers and encourages all employees to raise their voice,” the company knows it has “more work to do.”

The testimony was “more than troubling,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said, adding that Congress has “got to get to the bottom of this.” But he and other lawmakers offered few specific ideas about what to do, after decades of Congress endorsing and expanding a regulatory approach in which the FAA delegates much of its certification oversight to companies like Boeing.

And lawmakers had only limited time to discuss the issue. The two hearings broke early to accommodate the Senate’s impeachment trial for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Here are key takeaways from the hearings:

Foundation for Aviation Safety Executive Director Ed........

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