Second Boeing whistleblower dies; was fired after he complained about problems in plant

A second man who warned the Federal Aviation Administration that Boeing had a problem with its 737 aircraft has died, according to The Guardian.

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Joshua Dean, 45, of Wichita, Kansas, died Tuesday after a short illness.

Dean worked as a quality auditor for Spirit AeroSystems, a Boeing supplier. Before he was fired from the company in April 2023, he filed a complaint with the FAA alleging “serious and gross misconduct by senior quality management of the 737 production line” at Spirit.

The complaints came after two crashes of 737 Max planes – one in 2018 and one in 2019 –that killed 346 people.

In January, Dean said that Spirit pressured employees not to report defects to get planes out of the factory faster.

“Now, I’m not saying they don’t want you to go out there and inspect a job. You know, they do,” Dean told NPR. “But if you make too much trouble, you will get the Josh treatment. You will get what happened to me.”

Dean said he was fired in retaliation for flagging improperly drilled holes in fuselages.

“I think they were sending out a message to anybody else,” Dean said. “If you are too loud, we will silence you.”

Dean described what he saw while working for Spirit in a deposition for a lawsuit filed by the company’s shareholders. The shareholders accused the company of misleading investors by attempting to conceal “excessive” numbers of defects at the Kansas factory, NPR reported.

Dean is the second Boeing whistleblower to die this year. John Barnett, 62, was found from what investigators believed was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Charleston County, South Carolina, coroner’s office said in a statement.

Barnett was found dead on March 9 in the parking lot of a hotel where he was to have given testimony in a deposition concerning matters with Boeing’s production of the 737.

Barnett spent almost three decades at Boeing, and told the New York Times in 2019 that he had seen “clusters or metal slivers” hanging over the wiring of flight controls that could have caused “catastrophic” damage if they had penetrated wires.

Barnett repeatedly urged his bosses to remove the shavings, he said. But they refused and moved him to another part of the plant.

Another Boeing whistleblower, Sam Salehpour, told Congress last month that there was “no safety culture” at Boeing. Salehpour testified that employees who raised the alarm were “ignored, marginalized, threatened, sidelined and worse.”

He said he feared “physical violence” after going public with his concerns.

Note: If you or someone you know is thinking of harming themselves, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides free support via the Lifeline by dialing 988. For more about risk factors and warning signs, visit the organization’s official website.

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