A former Boeing employee who was found dead in March accused the company of “numerous” violations of aircraft safety laws in testimony given just before his death.
John Barnett claimed that the company tried to “eliminate” quality inspections at a factory that produces 787 planes, writes the BBC.
A former quality control manager, he gave a formal statement against the aircraft manufacturer. The death of the 62-year-old man allegedly occurred as a result of a suicide with a firearm.
Boeing says it was “saddened” by Mr Barnett’s death, but said the issues he raised had been reviewed and resolved.
The aerospace giant’s safety standards are currently under scrutiny, in part because of an incident in January when an unused door detached from a new 737 Max shortly after takeoff.
The transcript of Barnett’s statement has now been released by his lawyers. The lengthy document spans more than 140 pages.
Barnett has worked for Boeing for more than 30 years. before retiring for health reasons in 2017. He later filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that he was retaliated against by managers after repeatedly reporting serious safety flaws, an allegation that the company denies it.
Much of Barnett’s statement focuses on 2010, after Boeing moved from its Everett, Wash., plant to a then-new one in North Charleston.
The factory was established to help assemble the Boeing Dreamliner 787, an ultramodern plane used primarily on long-haul routes.
He once told the BBC and other publications that managers there routinely ignore formal procedures in order to build planes as quickly as possible.
In support of his legal complaint he said he was “humiliated, denigrated and treated with contempt” by senior managers, who subjected him to a gaslighting campaign and created a “hostile work environment” as a result of the revelations.
An important part of his testimony focused on the alleged falsification of records related to problems in the production process and in particular the recording of defective or substandard parts.
He alleged that employees were pressured to bypass established procedures, laid out in Boeing’s own quality management system, to save time. A common theme in the factory, he said, was: “We don’t have time to follow processes, we build airplanes.”
This, he said, allowed “a lot” of defective parts to reach the production line, while others simply disappeared. These include two large sections of the plane’s fuselage, which “were nowhere to be found”.
Danger of explosion
In one specific case, he claimed that a contaminated and defective tube designed to work in an oxygen system was taken from a trash can and could have been installed on an airplane that was now in service.
Such parts usually had to be carefully sterilized to reduce the risk of unwanted chemical reactions. Without that, he said, there was a risk that, if the system was activated, it would cause an explosion that could have brought the entire plane down.
He suggested there were “countless” occasions when documents were falsified and agreed with his lawyer’s suggestion that each breach of procedure was a serious and criminal offence.
Barnett was also highly critical of the South Carolina plant for cutting back on quality control inspections, again to speed up the manufacturing process.
“The pressure over the last 15 to 20 years at Boeing is to eliminate quality [inspecțiilor]. When I’m here in Charleston, that pressure is on steroids,” he said.
Boeing told the BBC: “Boeing has reviewed and addressed the quality issues raised by Mr Barnett prior to his retirement in 2017, as well as other quality issues mentioned in the complaint. The engineers’ review determined that the issues he- raised did not affect the safety of the plane”.
It also drew attention to an earlier decision in Mr. Barnett’s case in 2020, in which the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration concluded that Boeing had not violated the whistleblower protection law.
The manufacturer added that “we value employees speaking up, and we have systems in place to encourage them to speak up confidentially or anonymously. To ensure the safety, quality and compliance of our products, we investigate all allegations. We then work to address them as a priority and make improvements”.
The Barnett-Boeing lawsuit is expected to continue. He will be carried on by his mother Vicky Stokes and his brother Rodney Barnett as representatives of his estate.
The case is expected to go to court in September.
(Translated from the BBC)
Tags: Boeing employee denounced circumvention safety rules manufacture planes violent death
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