The TL;DR
A former Wisk Aero software manager is suing the Boeing subsidiary, claiming he was fired for blowing the whistle on an FAA-required inspection.
A former software manager at Wisk Aero, a Boeing air taxi subsidiary, has filed a lawsuit claiming he was fired after raising internal concerns about reduced 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 that say company executives pushed engineers to cut back on software tests required by the FAA to meet the plane’s 2025 test deadline.
O’Neill says he was terminated in March 2025, a few weeks after filing his second internal complaint. Wisk said he could not comment on pending litigation, and Boeing declined to comment on the matter. These allegations have not been confirmed in court, the case is still starting.
Wisk was founded in 2019 as a joint venture between Boeing and Kitty Hawk, an air taxi company backed by Google founder Larry Page, and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing. The company is developing a fully autonomous electric air taxi designed to fly without any pilot on board, remotely monitored by a single operator who can oversee up to three aircraft simultaneously. That approach sets it apart from competitors like Joby Aviation, which uses a pilot model and is far from the FAA certification process.
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Wisk’s Generation 6 aircraft completed its first flight in December 2025, and the second flew in May 2026, doubling its test fleet. The company is one of eight selected for the FAA’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, which launches in March 2026 and allows for supervised commercial testing in all 26 states over a three-year period. Wisk is preparing to work in Texas as part of that plan.
The case comes at a critical time in Boeing’s broader safety situation. The company has faced 32 complaints filed with OSHA since 2020, according to agency records, and a Senate subcommittee has held hearings on what it described as Boeing’s “.a broken safety culture.” Corporate retaliation against employees who raise concerns has become a recurring theme across the tech and aerospace industries, with legal action multiplying in recent years.
Whether O’Neill’s allegations hold up in court remains to be seen, but for Wisk, timing is critical. The company is asking the FAA to certify the first fully autonomous passenger plane in the United States, a process that depends entirely on regulators’ confidence that its software systems meet high safety standards. The lawsuit alleging that those same software testing requirements were deliberately weakened to meet an internal deadline raises the kind of question the FAA will need to answer before any certification is granted.
