Also, this is buried further down in the article than it should be.
> Mr. Pierson and his lawyers declined to answer whether he was seeking whistle-blower protection or filing a federal whistle-blower case. He has hired a prominent whistle-blower lawyer, Eric Havian, and could stand to gain monetarily if he pursued such a case.
For example, it seems like they didn't follow their own procedures regarding the system safety analysis as it relates to MCAS:
"Assessed a failure of the system as one level below “catastrophic.” But even that “hazardous” danger level should have precluded activation of the system based on input from a single sensor — and yet that’s how it was designed."[1].
There are also examples of incomplete documentation, etc. that may contribute to a lack of understanding of the overall system. My tendency is to think a culture of schedule pressure may contribute to this.
[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faile...
"Mr. Pierson believes that the production problems may have played a role in the crashes. In both accidents, MCAS was triggered when a vane installed on the plane’s fuselage malfunctioned."
"Workers were completing jobs out of sequence, leading to additional mistakes."
Everything this whistleblower is saying seems consistent with dozens of other stories which have emerged of Boeing's corroded engineering practices.
I've found over the course of my life that money encourages all sorts of people to say all sorts of things.
I mean, the concern would be that MCAS is just the tip of the iceberg, and that similar fuckups exist within the planes due to this management trouble.
There is some speculation in the article that the vane malfunctioned too frequently which may be rooted in production problems.