Boeing’s former quality manager John Barnett, who had raised multiple safety concerns about the 787-8 Dreamliner involved in last week’s fatal crash in India that killed 241 people, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in March. His death came just one day after providing testimony against Boeing in his wrongful termination lawsuit.
Barnett had spent 32 years in quality control at Boeing. Three months before his death, he had warned about the company’s decision to return the 737 airliner to service following several incidents.
While working at Boeing’s Charleston, South Carolina manufacturing facility, Barnett claimed 787 Dreamliners were being built with “sub-standard parts.” He told The New York Times that quality control procedures were frequently ignored, stating he hadn’t “seen a plane out of Charleston yet that I’d put my name on saying it’s safe and airworthy.”
This wasn’t the only internal warning about the aircraft. In January 2024, engineer Sam Salehpour became a whistleblower with troubling claims about the 787’s assembly process. Time reports that Salehpour witnessed workers “literally jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align” when fuselage sections wouldn’t fit properly. He warned these improvised connections created gaps that could cause catastrophic mid-flight breakups.
The 787 Dreamliner has been flying commercially since 2011.
Despite these serious allegations, the Dreamliner had maintained a perfect safety record until now, with over 1,100 aircraft in service worldwide before last week’s crash.
Pattern of Whistleblower Deaths Raises Questions
Barnett’s death follows another Boeing whistleblower’s sudden and mysterious passing. Joshua Dean, a former quality auditor at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, had filed a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) alleging “serious and gross misconduct by senior quality management of the 737 production line.”
Like Barnett, Dean had sued Boeing for wrongful termination after raising safety concerns. Neither whistleblower’s lawsuit against the aerospace giant had reached resolution before their deaths — leaving critical safety questions unaddressed and creating a troubling pattern for those who speak out against the company’s practices.