Boeing is preparing to launch its first crew capsule for NASA tomorrow after significant delays, so that’s one bit of potential good news they have going for them. But that’s nearly the only good news that the company has seen in a while. Mechanical failures during flights have continued to generate periodic headlines and ongoing hearings into production and safety issues at their facilities have kept their stockholders jittery. Now, that investigation may become even more heated. We learned this week that there are up to ten additional whistleblowers preparing to speak out in public. But their attorneys are expressing concerns about whether or not they will go through with it after a second whistleblower “died suddenly” and unexpectedly recently. Some of the others are now worried that the same fate might await them. (Hindustan Times)
It seems Boeing‘s troubles are never-ending as the company has been dogged by Congressional probes and whistleblowers testimony.
Joshua Dean and John Barnett, the two Boeing whistleblowers, were found dead under mysterious circumstances this year, raising speculations if there was any foul play in their deaths. Their lawyers are now concerned about the possibility that around ten more Boeing whistleblowers may get “scared away” due to their deaths or suffer the same fate.
The sudden demise of 45-year-old Dean was announced on May 30, less than two months after Barnett’s. While Dean worked for Spirit AeroSystems, a major sub contractor in the manufacturing of 737 Max airliners, Barnett was employed as production-quality manager of 787 Boeing.
To be clear, there has been no evidence presented yet to suggest that there was foul play involved in the deaths of either John Barnett or Joshua Dean. But the optics of those deaths are terrible for Boeing and many suspicions have been raised, whether they are justified or not. Barnett appeared to have taken his own life, despite having recently told people that he had no intention of doing so. Joshua Dean’s story is equally puzzling but it is thus far being attributed to natural causes. A relatively young and otherwise healthy man of 45 years was suddenly struck down by a host of infections and despite being taken for care at a hospital, he rapidly passed away.
Assuming any of the ten new whistleblowers don’t get cold feet and come forward, what remains unknown thus far is where they worked inside the company and what new revelations they might bring. If it’s just more examples of sloppy inspections and insufficient safety protocols, it might not hurt Boeing that badly because we’ve heard about all of that already and the company claims that those issues are being addressed. But if there are more allegations of retaliation against employees who raise concerns, that could be very bad news. Boeing continues to insist that they encourage people to speak up if they see quality issues and retaliation against them is forbidden. But John Barnett insisted that he absolutely was retaliated against in the form of demotions and transfers.
No matter what the new whistleblowers may or may not say, Boeing clearly needs to get this situation under control and begin rebuilding the trust of the flying public. People are nervous and now even Congress is probing the situation. If your company gets caught cutting corners when manufacturing refrigerators, someone’s leftovers may wind up spoiling. But when you make airplanes that carry hundreds of people tens of thousands of feet in the air and everything goes south, you will be generating massive amounts of the wrong sort of headlines, not to mention the crippling lawsuits that inevitably follow. At this point, I’ve given up flying pretty much entirely, but I realize that not everyone has that as an option. Stay safe out there. We’ll close with a brief video report from Dj’s Aviation on the current situation at Boeing that fills in a lot of the blanks, including more delays in the rollout of the company’s newest 777 line.