‘I’m Not Trying to Cause a Scene. I Just Want to Get Off This Plane.’

In 2018, Ed Pierson decided that he could no longer work as a senior manager for Boeing’s 737 MAX program.

At the company’s production facility in Renton, Washington, he had watched as employee morale plummeted and oversight and assembly procedures faltered. He told his superiors but retired soon after. But then fatal MAX 8 crashes occurred in 2018 and 2019. He decided to speak up publicly and was then called to testify before Congress on the problems he says he saw up close.

Read more of Oriana Pawlyk's reporting in POLITICO.