Wisk Aero Sued Over Rushed eVTOL Software Testing
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- Briahna O'Neill, Wisk's former Supervisor of Systems Engineering and Product Security, alleges she was fired March 31, 2025 — 12 days after filing a formal safety report through the company's internal system and 10 days after raising concerns directly with Wisk's head of safety.
- Wisk Aero's vehicle management system allegedly contained "known defects" and "spaghetti code" that had not undergone unit testing or root-cause analysis as required under the FAA-recognized DO-178C aviation software certification standard.
- The complaint alleges Wisk leadership pressed the team to cut testing further to preserve a May 2025 first-flight deadline for the company's sixth-generation autonomous eVTOL aircraft.
- O'Neill's complaint frames her termination — officially attributed to "environment that hinders collaboration" and "inefficiencies and program delays" — as retaliation under California Labor Code sections 1102.5 (whistleblower protection) and 6310 (unsafe-work-condition retaliation).
- The Gen 6 eVTOL's first flight was ultimately pushed to December 2025, when the aircraft performed initial vertical takeoff, hover, and stabilized flight maneuvers at Wisk's flight test facility in Hollister, California.
- Brian Yutko, Boeing Commercial Airplanes' VP of Product Development and Wisk's Board Chairman, defended the engineering methods as "a valuable source of insight for Boeing as we work together and thoughtfully apply them to the future of flight."
- The case is scheduled for a case management conference at Santa Clara County Superior Court on December 2, 2026.
Why it matters: A fired engineer's sworn allegations that Wisk's autonomous flight software skipped DO-178C testing — coupled with a first-flight slip from May to December 2025 — put the Boeing-backed eVTOL program before Santa Clara County Superior Court for a December 2, 2026 case management conference, where the company's certification claims face formal legal scrutiny and Boeing's publicly stated defense of those methods will be tested in discovery.
