SUICIDE? Death Of Boeing Whistleblower At Critical Point In Testimony Raises Questions

You may have noticed, Boeing has spent a lot of time in the news lately… for all the wrong reasons.

It seems like every time you turn around, you’re hearing a story about some kind of a crazy aircraft malfunction: a wheel falling off; a door plug popping out in mid-flight; a flaming engine and running off a Houston runway onto a grassy area. That’s not even a complete list of the most recent ones.

With that kind of news as a backdrop — not to mention the infamous issue with the Supermax crashes grounding the fleet in 2019 — a whistleblower coming up to testify about the manufacturer taking safety shortcuts could be devastating news. Especially when that whistleblower worked there for 30 years and has had at least some of his criticisms validated after an investigation was conducted.

He had finished one day of his deposition and was due to go back for the second. He was found dead before he could testify any further.

A Boeing whistleblower was found dead in his truck in the parking lot of his South Carolina hotel after he failed to show up for the second part of his testimony for a bombshell lawsuit against the company, a report said Monday.

John Barnett, 62, had raised safety concerns at the airline’s factories and provided his first testimony just days before he was found dead from an apparent “self-inflicted” gunshot wound, the Charleston County coroner told the BBC. — NYPost

The BBC has been following this whistleblower’s story for years. In a fairly detailed recounting of the concerns Barnett raised against Boeing’s safety record, here is a sampling of his complaints:

From 2010, he worked as a quality manager at the North Charleston plant making the 787 Dreamliner, a state-of-the-art airliner used mainly on long-haul routes.

In 2019, Mr Barnett told the BBC that under-pressure workers had been deliberately fitting sub-standard parts to aircraft on the production line.

He also said he had uncovered serious problems with oxygen systems, which could mean one in four breathing masks would not work in an emergency.

He said soon after starting work in South Carolina he had become concerned that the push to get new aircraft built meant the assembly process was rushed and safety was compromised, something the company denied.

He later told the BBC that workers had failed to follow procedures intended to track components through the factory, allowing defective components to go missing.

He said in some cases, sub-standard parts had even been removed from scrap bins and fitted to planes that were being built to prevent delays on the production line. — BBC

It doesn’t even take an allegation of murder to suggest something is wrong with this picture.

A hundred other questions could be raised as possible explanations — many of which would point to Barnett reaching some kind of a breaking point. Ordinarily, it would have been chalked up as a tragic loss of human life, and little more than that.

What makes this case different is the timing and what was (potentially) at stake if he testified. In light of that coincidence, one hopes investigators dig a little deeper on this one, and satisfy themselves that they’ve answered a few extra questions. Questions like:

What do we know about his whereabouts that day?
Who did he speak to?
Might he have been threatened?
Blackmailed?
Might someone else he cares about have been used as leverage with threats of violence or ruination?

Will we find out the answers to those questions? Maybe not. But with so much at stake, they’re worth asking anyway.

Especially since his own laywer is describing the fatal wound as an alleged self-inflicted gunshot.

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