On Saturday, a whistleblower who worked for decades at Boeing (and has since been on a crusade to expose unsafe practices at the company) was discovered dead in his truck from a gunshot wound outside his hotel in Charleston, SC.
John Barnett retired from Boeing in 2017 after 32 years at the airline giant. In recent days, Barnett had been going to the media and exposing Boeing's shoddy work.
Here's an example of some of the problems at Boeing, as exposed this week by Al Jazeera:
From the BBC's report on Barnett's death:
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.
Bad oxygen masks were a major concern. Barnett asserted about 1-in-4 of the masks wouldn't even drop in an emergency. He also gave examples of trashed junk parts below standard being retrieved from junk piles and put into the planes anyway to keep production on schedule.
Cutting corners with airplanes is a seriously dangerous problem.
And the 787 isn't the only Boeing plane with issues:
The 737 Max division, you'll recall, saw their head of operations replaced in the last month after multiple high-profile news stories of failures (including a door that blew off an Alaska Airlines jet).
Barnett said he reported these issues in the 787 division to the higher-ups at Boeing and was ignored. Then he claims that Boeing has been on a crusade to ruin his reputation ever since.
After retiring, he embarked on a long-running legal action against the company.
He accused it of denigrating his character and hampering his career because of the issues he pointed out - charges rejected by Boeing.
At the time of his death, Mr Barnett had been in Charleston for legal interviews linked to that case.
Last week, he gave a formal deposition in which he was questioned by Boeing's lawyers, before being cross-examined by his own counsel.
He had been due to undergo further questioning on Saturday. When he did not appear, enquiries were made at his hotel.
He was subsequently found dead in his truck in the hotel car park.
Yeah ... dead right before he was supposed to testify further against Boeing?
The folks at Boeing say they are sad about the tragedy.
In the days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company.
Boeing said it was saddened to hear of Mr Barnett's passing.
Yeah, I'm sure they are.
This whole thing with Boeing, well, it makes one a little nervous to fly. And now with a primary whistleblower out of the picture, the likelihood of getting to the bottom of Boeing's issues seems less likely.
I just want to feel safe to fly again and that I can trust the people building airplanes. Is that too much to ask?
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