The whistleblower who publicly questioned the problems with Boeing's production line shot himself on March 9th.
According to reports from Congressional Hill and Fox Business News, John Barnett, a 62 year old former employee of Boeing, was found dead in the car on the 9th. Fox Business News cited a hospital statement stating that John Barnett died from a "self inflicted gunshot wound" and was found in a car in a hotel parking lot.
This elderly person, who had been in a lawsuit with Boeing for 5 years, was still providing evidence for the lawsuit against Boeing for a period of time before his death. The New York Post reported that it was precisely in order to provide testimony in the lawsuit against Boeing that John recently stayed at the hotel where the incident occurred.
Regarding John's passing, Boeing stated in a statement that the company is saddened by Mr. Barnett's passing and extends condolences to his family and friends.
The enmity between John and Boeing may have come to an end, but his death has once again raised widespread concerns about Boeing's safety issues. This issue is also the reason why John has always been tough with Boeing.
According to the BBC, John began working as a quality manager at the Boeing factory in North Charleston in 2010, responsible for manufacturing Boeing 787 aircraft primarily used on long-distance routes, until his retirement due to health reasons in 2017.
In 2019, John reported that employees at his Boeing factory in South Carolina, who were overworked, intentionally installed substandard parts onto airplanes on the production line. In addition, he found serious problems with the oxygen system. Testing of the emergency oxygen system installed on Boeing 787 aircraft showed a failure rate of 25%, which means that up to a quarter of oxygen masks may not be usable in real-life emergency situations.
John claimed that he had alerted Boeing management to these issues, but they did not take any action.
It is worth noting that as early as 2014, Al Jazeera had conducted an undercover investigation of John's Boeing factory in South Carolina, reporting serious management loopholes, with management turning a blind eye to up to 90% of production issues and employees becoming addicted to drugs.
Just like in response to media surveillance videos back then, Boeing also denied John's accusations. But the investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) provided credibility to some of Barnett's allegations. A 2017 review report found that at least 53 "non-conforming" components could not be traced and were believed to be lost in the company's system. Boeing was ordered to take remedial action.
But the lawsuit between the two sides has never been finalized. Before John's death, he was in legal talks related to the Boeing case. It is reported that he was supposed to receive further questioning on the 9th, but due to his long absence, the interrogators went to his hotel and only discovered that he died in a car parked in the hotel parking lot.
Nowadays, the whistleblower has died, and Boeing has recently been at the forefront of public opinion. There have been multiple flight safety incidents involving Boeing since the beginning of this year, with at least three incidents occurring in March.
On March 12th, The New York Times reported that due to the frequent incidents of Boeing aircraft accidents in recent times, the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States has conducted an investigation into Boeing and its airframe suppliers. The results showed that out of 89 audits, as many as 33 were not passed, and a total of 97 possible non compliant situations were identified. Thirteen audits were conducted on the aircraft supplier, inevitably Rui Aviation Systems, of which seven failed, more than half.
The Federal Aviation Administration of the United States stated that during the 6-week audit, "multiple situations" were discovered, involving these two companies "possibly not complying with some manufacturing quality control requirements.". Among them, Boeing has "non-compliance" in manufacturing process control, component transportation and storage, and product control.
This makes people unable to help but feel that even the temporarily leading technological strength in the product production process can be completely destroyed by any mistake in the assembly process. Boeing once stood out globally due to its IPD integrated development model, systems engineering methodology, global supply chain integration capabilities, and project lifecycle management, but it is a pity to want to "sleep on the credit card".
Article | Reporter Leng Shuang