LONDON - A former Boeing engineer has told the BBC's Panorama programme that work on the production line of the 737 Max plane was not adequately funded.
The aircraft is currently grounded after two crashes which killed 346 people.
The 737 Max is the company's fastest selling plane and has earned the company billions of dollars in sales.
Boeing denies the claims and says it's committed to making the 737 Max one of the safest aircraft ever to fly.
Adam Dickson worked at Boeing for 30 years and led a team of engineers who worked on the 737 Max. He said they were under constant pressure to keep costs down.
"Certainly what I saw was a lack of sufficient resources to do the job in its entirety," he says.
"The culture was very cost centred, incredibly pressurised. Engineers were given targets to get certain amount of cost out of the aeroplane."
Mr Dickson said engineers were under pressure to downplay new features on the 737 Max.
He said by classifying them as minor rather than major changes, Boeing would face less scrutiny from the US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration.
"The goal was to show that those differences were so similar to the previous design that it would not require a major design classification in the certification process. There was a lot of interest and pressure on the certification and analysis engineers in particular, to look at any changes to the Max as minor changes."
He said that downplaying the changes reduced scrutiny in a way that could impact safety. Now even his own family have fears about the plane's safety.
"My family won't fly on a 737 Max. It's frightening to see such a major incident because of a system that didn't function properly or accurately."
Boeing said its former engineer's comments were incorrect.
"We did not cut corners or push the 737 Max out before it was ready," it said.
"We have always held true to our values of safety, quality and integrity and those values are complementary and mutually reinforcing with productivity and company performance."
Passengers first flew on the 737 Max in 2017, but airlines have been making advance purchases since the plane was first marketed in 2011
Five thousand have been ordered - making it the fastest-selling plane in Boeing's history.
Some of the money from those sales has been used to fund big pay-outs for company executives and shareholders.
Since 2013, Boeing has paid $17bn (£13.74bn) in dividends to shareholders and has spent a further $43bn buying its own shares - a spending spree that has helped Boeing treble its share price in just five years.
Chief executive Dennis Muilenburg has also been paid more than $70m.(FA)
