TL;DR
A former Wisk Aero program manager is suing a Boeing subsidiary, claiming he was fired for cutting back on FAA-required testing.
A former program manager at Wisk Aero, Boeing’s autonomous air taxi subsidiary, appealed to the court with his claim He was fired after raising internal security concerns about software testing, the Seattle Times first reported. Briahna O’Neill filed a lawsuit in Santa Clara Superior Court alleging wrongful termination and discrimination. According to the complaint, O’Neill submitted two internal safety reports alleging that company executives forced engineers to cut FAA-required software tests to meet a 2025 test flight deadline.
O’Neill said he was terminated in March 2025, weeks after he filed his second internal complaint. Wisk said it could not comment on pending litigation, and Boeing declined to comment on the matter. The allegations have not been proven in court and the case is at an early stage.
Wisk was founded in 2019 as a joint venture between Boeing and Kitty Hawk, an air taxi company backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, and is now a subsidiary of Boeing. The company is developing a fully autonomous electric air taxi, designed to fly without a pilot on board, controlled remotely by an operator who controls up to three aircraft at once. This approach sets it apart from its competitors Joby Aviationwhich uses a pilot model and is the furthest along in the FAA certification process.
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Wisk’s 6th generation aircraft completed its first flight in December 2025, and the second prototype in May 2026 doubled the test fleet. The company is one of eight selected for the FAA’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, which begins in March 2026 and allows controlled commercial testing in 26 states over three years. Wisk is preparing for operations in Texas as part of that program.
The lawsuit comes at a difficult time for Boeing’s broader safety reputation. According to federal records, the company has faced 32 whistleblower complaints filed with OSHA since 2020, and a Senate subcommittee found Boeing’s “a broken safety culture.” Corporate retaliation against employees who cause harassment has become a recurring theme in the tech and aerospace industries, and legal actions have proliferated in recent years.
Whether O’Neill’s claims will hold up in court remains to be seen, but the timing is particularly sensitive for Wisk. The company is asking the FAA to certify its first fully autonomous passenger aircraft in the United States, a process that depends entirely on regulators’ confidence that its software systems meet the highest safety standards. A lawsuit alleging that testing requirements for the same software were deliberately weakened to meet an internal deadline raises a question the FAA must answer before any certification is issued.
