Boeing Whistleblower Found Dead From ‘Self-Inflicted’ Wound

Former Boeing quality manager John Barnett, who publicly voiced safety concerns about Boeing’s planes, died at 62.

Barnett died March 9 in his truck in a Charleston, South Carolina, hotel parking lot due to what the county coroner says was a “self-inflicted” wound, according to the BBC.

The Charleston City Police Department is investigating his death.

Barnett retired from Boeing in 2017 after a 32-year career. From 2010, he spent time as a quality manager at the North Charleston plant responsible for producing the 787 Dreamliner. He became a whistleblower in 2019, alleging that Boeing had compromised safety standards in its haste to manufacture the new aircraft, leading to the use of faulty parts and malfunctioning oxygen masks on approximately a quarter of the planes.

One anonymous source affiliated with Boeing told Al Jazeera in a 2014 documentary that they “saw a lot of things that should not go on at an airplane plant … people talking about doing drugs, looking for drugs.”

One plant worker from Boeing, speaking ostensibly from inside the plant, said, “It’s all coke and, um, painkillers and, what’s the other one … you can get weed here, you can get some really good weed here.”

Barnett’s allegations followed the fatal crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in 2018 and 2019, which resulted in nearly 350 deaths. Despite Boeing’s denial of Barnett’s claims and reassurances about their aircraft’s safety, a 2017 review by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed some of his concerns, prompting directives for Boeing to rectify the identified issues.

Boeing has since stated that the issues raised by Barnett have been addressed and that their airplanes undergo thorough safety inspections before leaving the factory. However, Barnett, who sued Boeing alleging retaliation for his disclosures, continued to express concerns about the company’s safety culture up until his recent death.

Barnett was in Charleston for legal proceedings related to his lawsuit against Boeing at the time of his passing. He had given a formal deposition just a week before his death, with further questioning scheduled for the day he was found deceased.

The news of Barnett’s death comes amid recent safety incidents involving Boeing aircraft, including a Boeing 787 Dreamliner experiencing a “technical problem” that resulted in injuries to 50 passengers, and a Boeing 737 MAX 9 fuselage panel detaching mid-flight.