today on getting answers. the magic number needed for retirement is at an all time high across america, and it may not surprise you that californians need a little more money than that. a financial expert will show us how to get

there then. are you addicted to your phone? many of us are. and that inspired a new york times reporter to do an experiment. what happened when she switched to a flip phone and how much time abc seven news anchors and reporters spend on our phones. but first, a boeing whistleblower testified on capitol hill today with serious allegations about the safety of another model of boeing jets. his stunning claims on how they were put together, and his warning that the planes could fall apart after a few years. you're watching. getting answers. i'm kristen sze. thanks for joining us. it is a bad day for boeing and a bad day for alaska airlines. separately from this hearing that calls into question the integrity and safety of one of the most flown boeing models, alaska planes had to stop flying. today, the faa issued a nationwide ground stop on all alaska flights this morning. this after a technical issue that happened while alaska was trying to upgrade its system

that calculates the weight and balance of planes. though the ground stop was lifted after just one hour, the damage was done. there were mass delays, and even now the airline is still trying to fully recover. today's issue is just the latest in a string of aviation problems this year. the most visible of which was that blown out door plug on a boeing jet flown by alaska. and boeing was on the hot seat again today as an employee turned whistleblower took his shocking claims to capitol hill. abc's christiane cordero has the story. >> today, a boeing engineer spoke out on capitol hill about his employer. >> i'm not here today because i want to be here. i'm here today because i felt that i must come forward. >> sam sleeper claims the boeing 787 dreamliner could fail over time because he believes it was put together improperly. he accuses boeing of taking manufacturing shortcuts by ignoring gaps in the fuselage to save time and money. >> in a rush to address its bottlenecks in production, boeing has hit problems pushing

pieces together with excessive force to make them appear that the gaps don't exist, even though they exist. >> so far, sleeper has not provided any documentation to support this claim. boeing calls the claims inaccurate and says it is fully confident in the safety and durability of the 787. boeing strongly disputes the allegations, and this week the company invited cameras inside of its south carolina facility, where senior engineers explained how boeing tested the fuselage, simulating 165,000 flights with no issues. >> it's actually the longest fatigue test of any commercial airplane that's ever been run. >> the faa reviewed and approved boeing's production quality after the issue was first raised years ago. it's conducting another investigation into sandhya patel claims, claims industry experts say warrant many questions. >> we've got to pay attention to our whistleblowers, but when you hear somebody conflating things a little bit, i begin to be concerned about their overall message. >> salarpur accuses boeing of retaliating against him after

speaking out. boeing says it encourages employees to speak up about any issues. it also says reports to an internal tip line for quality control are up 500% this year. christiane cordero, abc news, washington. >> so the whistle blowers allegations relate to the boeing 787 dreamliner. and here to talk more about it is john nance, aviation analyst for abc news, whom you saw in that piece. hi, john. thanks for your time. how are you? >> oh, good to be here. i'm good i'm good. >> thank you. so how common is the 787 dreamliner model who flies it. and on which routes? >> it's flown all over the world. now it's a beautiful airplane. it is one of the first airplanes. uh- certainly the only one uh- that has been produced before airbus got into the run with a carbon fiber methodology. and that opens them up for a little bit of additional scrutiny whenever anything happens. but for somebody to say that it might fall apart in the air ignores the fact that every jetliner out there, including what airbus builds, are built in sections

and wedded together. and if you've got 150 foot long fuselage and you put the two pieces together, you're not going to have a perfect circle. that's why there are procedures for putting them in place. uh- with the shims and other degrees of force that are very carefully controlled. so i don't find i don't find this very believable from the gentleman who was speaking. although i tell you, we must always listen to and protect our whistleblowers. but in this particular case, it doesn't make any sense. >> right? i mean, he pointed to there being pieces and as you said, you know, putting pieces together necessarily means there may be a gap, however tiny. but i'm sure there are fasteners used or something. right, to, to kind of keep them together. but in this case, there's something particularly unusual. or perhaps, you know, problematic about the way this particular model is put together, pulled together, the different pieces. >> well, that's the allegation that the gentleman made. but really what we're doing right

now, what you're seeing, including the faa's other hearing today on capitol hill, is talking about the level of compliance and the level of attitude towards safety on the front lines and what might have changed over time. this is really a human factors problem. this is not the airplane. the airplanes design is sacrosanct as far as i'm concerned. i've seen nothing uh- that would dissuade me from flying on any boeing airplane at any time. but it's the assembly, as we found with the alaska airlines situation that's been called into question. at any rate, the one the one thing to take to the bank here is the fact that we've got thousands and thousands of these airplanes flying all the time. we have a constant test bed. and these problems just are are not coming to the fore, especially with the testing. you don't envision the possibility that he described that it could, you know, fall apart, come apart mid-air, leading to a disaster. >> okay, to the best of my knowledge, that just can't happen. okay. >> i do want to ask you, though. what do you think should be done right? by the way, it's worth noting that this is a totally

different aircraft than that. 737 max nine that had the door plug fly off on the alaska plane, which led to the grounding, right? the inspections of all the aircraft, should they ground the 787 dreamliner and inspect them all? >> absolutely not. there's nothing to inspect for that. that's going to help. this is a manufacturing question as to how these things are joined together, how the parts are joined together, and they've been looking very carefully at this airplane ever since they produced it to make sure since it was carbon fiber to a great extent, that there was nothing unusual that they might not have seen in an aluminum airplane. now, there's no reason for rounding at all. >> you mentioned the lightness of it, i think. isn't that why the airliners like it? because it's more fuel efficient, right? yeah. okay. i understand from here united might use it to fly to asia. and i think hawaiian just ordered them. right. >> that's right. it is a lighter airplane that means less fuel burn, and there are all sorts of attributes. so for one thing, this is the only jetliner in the sky that actually adds a certain amount of moisture to the

atmosphere. so you're less fatigued at the other end, a lot of innovations in this bird. hum >> okay. i just want to show united's response. they said many things, but one that is worth pointing out relates to the culture aspect that you were talking about. right boeing said we take the faa review panels, detailed assessment to heart and will act on their findings and feedback. it further goes on to say since 2020, boeing has taken important steps to foster a safety culture that empowers and encourages all employees to raise their voice. we know we have more work to do. yeah. so what is that? more work? you think they need to do it sounds like retaliate. we want you to speak up if you see something unusual. do you think that's being done? >> this is an excruciating thing for a leadership of a major corporation to say we want more, not less, feedback. we want people to speak up. we'll protect them. at the same time, of course, you cringe when somebody brings you a problem, so that has to be constantly monitored by leadership and by outside, sources like the faa,

which is at their best when they are a mentor. and all of this is moving into the right direction, which is this is a watershed moment for boeing. it doesn't mean that they are going downhill in terms of overall quality. it does mean that they've got to change the way they view on the front lines. their responsibilities towards personal responsibilities, towards safety. and that's what's been slipping over time. the idea that they could they could have things wrong with the airplane as it's going down the production line, but still push it to the next position on the line, rather than stopping the line and making sure it was right. >> okay, john, look, let's talk really quickly before we go about the faa ground stop today. the order for alaska airlines, it was a system issue, i guess, right. the system that calculates the weight and the balance, which is of course so important, but is this common? is this a common technical problem? and you know, that requires a ground stop. >> this is such a common problem that we are totally dependent in the aviation industry. now on massive computers with very, very complex interacting programs. and it doesn't matter which airline it is, everybody

has experienced who runs these things, upload, that has gone wrong or an hour or 2 or 3 or hours and you cannot fly the airline. it's not just because of the weight and balance. it's every other aspect, including flight crew, scheduling and fueling and what we call ship routing. it's, it's just a nightmare when it happens. this was for one hour and it's already recovered. but by the same token, the glitch will continue to reverberate in alaska's system for probably 2 or 3 days. >> can i just ask you, though, is safety ever compromised when something like this happens, no, i've never seen an example of that that i would say it was compromised, certainly, if anybody tried to press beyond it and just do things by paper the way we used to, that would not be either legal or reasonable, but no, just unfortunately says, okay, until we get this up and running and we get all the components back together, we can't fly. >> all right. and john, one final question, i promise we have about 30s, but do you believe that the faa, which is supposed to monitor the airlines

needs monitoring itself in the sense that are they getting too cozy to the airlines, as some critics have charged, this is an eternal question. >> the faa is full of some of the most hardworking government employees and public servants i've ever read, but by the same token, they have a huge responsibility, and it's always appropriate to be asking those questions both internally and externally. but i think the answer is they're in a pretty good position to be very fair. and a mentor, which is exactly the way they ought to be. >> john nance, aviation analyst for abc news. thanks for all that great information you crammed into a very short amount of time. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> coming up next, the rising cost of retirement, how much californians estimate they'll need and how to plan today to meet that goal. stay with us

what can you do at any age to set yourself up for a comfortable golden years? joining us live now is natalie ley, a financial adviser with northwestern mutual, to share with us the findings of their 2024 planning and progress study. hey, natalie. >> hi, kristen. how are you? i'm good, i'm good. >> thanks. hey. so the magic number, that's how much you need in savings to be able to retire comfortably. and that number has been going up the last few years, right? >> yes, absolutely. >> let's go ahead and take a look because we have your study. so we're going to throw the numbers up. and you tell me what you know. it looks like 2020. you needed less than a million. and now what 50% more. >> yeah. so you know, as we were doing our study, it was a lot of what people felt like they needed to retire. and with the

clients that i'm working with today, there has been an increased level of anxiety around saving enough for retirement. and people are coming to me sooner and sooner and sooner worried about, hey, is social security going to be here for me? right? cost of living is increasing so much i can't afford a house. when can i afford a house? will i have to rent forever and so it's really causing a huge tide of, you know, americans or even californians at a younger age to just start putting away as much as they can as early as they possibly can. >> i can see why, right? can unions estimate that they'll need 1.47 million in retirement, just a little bit more than the 1.4 million that uh- americans at large say. but it's interesting that there is also kind of a generational gap as well. so let's go ahead and show people a different set of numbers. and that is what each generation right from gen z, the youngest to the boomers, the older folks. right, need and so

explain these numbers, which you also found in your study, the amount saved for retirement currently that they have. and the gap between what they have and what they think they'll need. >> yeah. so as i mentioned, with cost of living being so high in california and, you know, we're in the bay area, a lot of my clients are younger and younger, and they are living at home as well. right. so the inability to purchase a home, they're living with their parents a little bit longer. they're maxing out their roth iras. they are even maxing out 401 ks so much earlier on than i've seen with other clients. and again, i think all of that is a trailing effect of, i think, fear of not having enough, in retirement. and also just the fear of, you know, instability, around social security potentially being an issue. and so again, it's just they're just saving at such a high level. i also feel like it's the access to resources that they see, right? whether that's social media, whether

that's on their own research, just knowing that they don't have access to pensions as much either. so they're feeling a lot of self responsibility in saving for themselves. and that's why that makes sense too. >> by the way, when you say savings, do you mean assets. and if so, what form of assets. >> yeah. so for the study that we had put out, the assets included things like 401 ks, saving pensions, investment accounts didn't include other things like real estate or anything like that, but, yeah, mostly four one ks and roth iras. >> okay. so given these findings , i wonder, you know, and the anxiety and all that insecurity, me being at an all time high in terms of their financial stability in retirement, what are your suggestions and tips and advice? >> yeah. so when it comes to financial planning, we always want to build a really strong foundation. and i say, look, life can throw you all kinds of curveballs. number one, we got to stay out of debt. and how do we stay out of debt? we want to

make sure that everyone has a really solid emergency savings. right? life happens. let's make sure that we have savings for that. maximizing company benefits are huge. so number one, again with company benefits we have to understand what's being given to us and being educated around hey, am i taking advantage of all of the benefits that are given to me and outside of that, what else can i do? so whether that's 401 k accounts, whether those are roth ira accounts, a huge thing as well is protecting your income, right? none of this works without your ability to go work and earn an income. so understanding company policy around things like long tum disability, and also just making sure that, you know, you are planning for yourself in those given situations. and then if there's debt involved, student loans, car loans, like having a strategy around that and making sure that we know the cadence of paying that down. >> all right. really good advice. i just want to ask you, though, some of this of what you're saying is really geared towards people who are still

young enough to start doing some of those things now. right but what if you're ready in the boomers category and you're in your 60s and 70s, you're either on the verge of retirement or you should be retired already, but you find that you have that huge gap and you can't uh- best financial advice for them? >> i would definitely say, you know, it's a little bit difficult. that's not the demographic that i solely work in. but number one is making sure that you are utilizing all the resources possible. all right. also living within your means, having an understanding of how much social security do i get today, how much do i have in these accounts and really, how much do i need to spend on an annual basis to make sure, you know, we don't outlive our dollars, but then again, you know, a lot of it is there's resources out there. there's people to reach out to. and i encourage anyone out there to just reach out and ask questions. and we're all more than happy to help. >> that's always a great strategy. natalie lei, a financial advisor with northwestern mutual. thank you so much. >> thank you for having me. >> coming up, tackling phone

addiction, a new york times reporter tells us how switching to a flip phone was the answer for her. plus, we can all learn a ♪ you've got a friend in me ♪ ♪ ♪ you've got a friend in me ♪ ♪ ♪ you just remember what your old pal said ♪ ♪ boy, you've got a friend in me ♪ ♪ it's a celebration of friendship & beyond. from the new parade to together forever - a new nighttime spectacular fireworks show. pixar fest. at the disneyland resort for a limited time. starting april 26th.

you been considering a detox or at least a decrease in your phone usage? a new york times technology reporter thought to do a little experiment. and joining us live now is cashmere hill, who is the author of your face belongs to us, a book about the ai company that gave facial recognition to law enforcement. cashmere, thanks so much for joining us. >> hi. glad to be here. >> so how did you discover or conclude that you were perhaps addicted to your phone? >> well, i have an iphone and apple sends you screen time reports every week that tell you how long you've been using your phone. and my screen time reports were disturbing. they were regularly over five hours a day. more than six hours a day.

one week i was using my phone. i hate to even admit it. uh- nine hours a day and i just found it staggering. and i calculated out over the course of the year, and it meant that i'd been using. i've been looking at my phone for about three months of the year, which i just knew i needed to change. >> okay, okay. by the way, you're certainly not alone. i'm a little afraid, but let's go ahead and take a look at the phone usage of some of us here at abc seven. me okay, look at this. uh. on average, daily in the past week, almost eight hours. and thank you to reggie, stephanie sierra and dustin dorsey for volunteering their usage. five and a half reggie uh, stephanie sierra, dustin, you know, four and a half a little better than me, but certainly still in that category where you're thinking, oh, that's a lot of my life. when you add it all up. yes. wow. is this typical? i mean, are we the anomaly here because we have these reporter jobs where we're just always on the go communicating with people, or is

that pretty average? >> the 4.5 hours a day is actually the average for most people. most people are looking at their phones 4.5 hours a day. they're picking them up about 100 times a day. i mean, we are all addicted to our phones. >> wait, it tells me how many times i'm picking up the phone. yes. okay. i'm really afraid to look at that. and i'm not going to. by the way, is that your only device? when you said you were using it at 5.5 hours ish a day, is that your only device, or are you doing some of your screen stuff like emails on a laptop and that's not even being counted in? >> yeah, you may be shocked to hear that. as a technology reporter at the new york times, i do also have a laptop. i have a work laptop. i also have a personal laptop, and we have an ipad that's shared among our family. >> okay, now that the confession is done, let's get to the meat of this, which is you said, oh, too much. so guess what? i'm going to downgrade while everybody else is upgrading to get the latest and smartest phone. you're you went for the flip phone. explain what you did

here. >> yeah, i decided i needed to do kind of a cold turkey approach and so i got rid of my iphone and i bought a, $100 flip phone orbit journey. i mean, it's my if any listeners are, around my age, they probably remember using this about 20 years ago. >> hey, i remember my blackberry . i loved taping into it, you know, with my thumbs. okay, so what happened in this one month experiment when you got your flip phone? what changed for you? >> well, there are many things that were very hard. i had forgotten how to get around in the world without google maps, so i had to kind of train my brain to, know roads and figure out directions, but i actually had this physical little twitch, like i called it the thumb twitch, where i wanted to scroll on the phone. i found myself reaching into the my pocket, trying to get it out to check my notifications and it took me about two weeks for that kind of physical urge to check the

device to go away. and then eventually i just started feeling amazing, like i felt really calm. i felt like i could step away from the internet and just think about things. i was able to concentrate more. i read a ton of books. my husband told me your face looks less stressed , and my kids said they loved flip phone mom because i spent so much more time playing with them. oh, now that is the most important reason of them all. >> that's enough. okay, so given all those great things that happened, what are you going to do now that that your experiment is over? are you going to stick with a flip phone or are you going back to the smartphone? >> so i did this experiment in december. and so it's been a few months now, and i have kind of eased back into smartphone life. i switched my smartphone to grayscale, which is basically turning it into like a black and white screen, because one of the researchers i talked to for the story said that doing that leads people to use their phone about

20% less. and, i don't sleep with it in my room anymore, which is really helped. my sleep because i don't wake up in the middle of the night and check it. i've gotten all these strategies to reduce the usage, and now i'm down to about two hours of using it per day. >> oh, so during that month you reshaped your habits and you were able to keep some of that, even though you brought the you know, enticing, tempting device back. >> but you made a less tempting is what you're telling me. and that's important. >> yeah, i just, i think it's exactly it's about habits. i changed my habits. i'm trying more now. like when i'm at the new york times and i'm standing in front of the elevators, i try to just stand there and be in my thoughts instead of reaching into my pocket, because it's this default kind of boring moment and checking my phone and yeah, i it it worked for me, i was talking the other day with somebody who studies addiction and she did say that, you know, moving away, not using something for 30 days can really change

your behavior when it comes to that thing. and it worked for me . >> kashmir hill, thank you so much for coming on to share this with us. appreciate it. abc7 news is streaming 24 seve

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with experts from around the bay area. world . >> reporter: tonight, breaking news. >> reporter: tonight, an outbreak of powerful storms barreling east, targeting millions for a third night in a also breaking tonight, the effort colin