Before the market opens, Boeing fell more than 2%. Reports indicate that on the day the whistleblower testified about safety issues with the 787, he "committed suicide".
A former employee who had reported major quality defects at Boeing committed suicide. Before passing away, he was still providing testimony for the legal lawsuit against Boeing.
John Barnett, a key whistleblower and former employee who exposed major quality defects at Boeing, suspiciously "committed suicide" during the legal battle with Boeing.
According to media reports, John Barnett, who had previously exposed significant quality issues at Boeing, passed away on March 9 in Charleston County, South Carolina, in what was deemed a "suicide." He was scheduled for further questioning on March 9 but failed to appear on time, and was found dead in his car in the hotel parking lot.
Public records show that Barnett worked at Boeing for 32 years and retired in 2017 due to health reasons. From 2010 to 2017, he served as the quality manager for the Boeing 787 final assembly line. Over the years, he repeatedly raised serious warnings to the company's management about the quality issues of Boeing products, but his concerns were not taken seriously.
After retiring, Barnett initiated a long-standing lawsuit against Boeing, accusing the company of defaming his character, hindering his career development, and retaliating against him for raising quality concerns. Just a week before his death, he testified in court under questioning from both sides to provide evidence for the lawsuit.
Barnett had previously revealed that in order to speed up the production of the 787 aircraft, workers had been lax in managing the assembly process, leading to the installation of non-conforming parts on the fuselage. He also exposed a high failure rate of up to 25% in the emergency oxygen mask system of some 787 aircraft, a major quality defect that could render a quarter of the masks unusable in emergency situations:
Workers had taken scrapped parts from the waste bin and reassembled them onto the aircraft being produced to avoid production delays. I reported these issues to management multiple times, but they were not taken seriously.
Although Boeing has consistently denied Barnett's allegations, an audit by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2017 partially confirmed his claims, uncovering at least 53 missing non-conforming parts. Boeing was ordered to take immediate remedial measures.
Barnett's passing undoubtedly further intensifies external doubts about the quality of Boeing's products. Not long ago, a brand-new 737 Max aircraft experienced a serious incident shortly after takeoff, with an unsecured emergency door falling off, exposing Boeing's quality control issues.
At the time of writing, Boeing's stock in the U.S. pre-market trading has dropped by approximately 2%.
