John Barnett Boeing: Whistleblower, who questioned firm's safety standards, found dead in US days after giving evidence

John Barnett, a former quality manager at Boeing who was in the middle of blowing the whistle against the firm over safety issues, has been found dead in the US. Mr Barnett had worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement in 2017, and had raised concerns about Boeing's production standards following the Alaska Airlines window blow out incident on 5 January.

The Charleston County coroner confirmed his death to the BBC on Monday (11 March). It said the 62-year-old had died from a "self-inflicted" wound on Saturday (9 March) and police were investigating.

In the days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the firm. He gave a formal deposition in which he was questioned by Boeing's lawyers, before being cross-examined by his own counsel.

He had been due to undergo further questioning on Saturday but he did not appear. Enquiries were made at his hotel and he was subsequently found dead in his truck in the hotel car park.

In a statement Boeing said: "We are saddened by Mr Barnett's passing, and our thoughts are with his family and friends." At the end of January Mr Barnett had claimed that Boeing was cutting corners on its planes. 

His comments came after an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 plane saw its window blow out shortly after take off. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) promptly ordered the grounding of this fleet of aircraft, however a few weeks later it was announced that the fleet would be back up in the air again.

Mr Barnett had raised concerns about the aircraft being back in service again so quickly. He told TMZ Live on Wednesday, 31 January that he is “concerned” about the aircraft being back up in the air as jobs are “not being completed properly”.

He said that “they have done due diligence and inspections to ensure that the door plugs on the 737 are installed properly” but “my concern is what about the rest of the aeroplane?”. He added that he has these concerns because “inspection steps have been removed” and issues are “being ignored”. 

He said: “When I first started working at Charleston I was in charge of pushing back defects to our suppliers. I took a team of inspectors to Spirit Aerosystems to inspect the 41 section before they sent it to Charleston and we found 300 defects, some of them were significant and needed engineering intervention.”

Mr Barnett had also told the BBC in 2019 that under-pressure workers had been deliberately fitting sub-standard parts to aircraft on the production line, and that he had uncovered serious problems with oxygen systems which could mean one in four breathing masks would not work in an emergency.

He also claimed that tests on emergency oxygen systems due to be fitted to the 787 showed a failure rate of 25%, meaning that one in four could fail to deploy in a real-life emergency. Boeing denied his assertions, but a review by the FAA in 2017 did uphold some of Mr Barnett's concerns.

A preliminary report by the US National Transportation Safety Board into the Alaska Airlines incident found evidence suggesting that four key bolts designed to hold the door in place had been missing. The FAA said last week it had given Boeing 90 days to come up with a plan to correct problems in its production and shortage procedures following an audit that identified “non-compliance issues”. The Sun reports that the coroner has said that Mr Barnett died from a "self-inflicted" wound and police are investigating the death.