A second person who spoke out about problems at Boeing has died unexpectedly. Joshua Dean, 45 years old, fell ill two weeks ago and experienced difficulty breathing. He visited the doctor and was diagnosed with pneumonia and a bacterial infection called MRSA. He passed away on April 30, 2024. Dean was allegedly fired in retaliation for flagging lax standards at the company’s manufacturing plant in Wichita, Kansas. He accused a Boeing supplier of ignoring defects in the production of the 737 MAX
Joshua Dean was one of the first people to report issues with a company that supplies parts to Boeing, called Spirit AeroSystems. He lost his job in April 2023. Two weeks ago, he had trouble breathing and had to go to the hospital. His health got worse, and he needed a machine to help him breathe. He also got pneumonia and a serious bacterial infection called MRSA. Doctors found out he had a stroke too. Dean had the same lawyers as another person who raised concerns about Boeing, John Barnett. John passed away in March, and some people think it was not an accident.
Dean, who used to check the quality of things made by Spirit AeroSystems for Boeing, told the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that “serious and gross misconduct by senior quality management of the 737 production line.” Two planes called 737 Max crashed in 2018 and 2019, and 346 people died. Dean lost his job at Spirit last year. He said he was fired because he told them about safety problems.
The Seattle Times says Dean got sick and had a hard time breathing. He went to the hospital and had a tube put in to help him breathe. Then he got pneumonia and a bad infection. Two weeks later, he died. Dean’s aunt, Carol Dean Parsons, published the news on Facebook that he died Tuesday morning. She said they will miss him a lot and will always love him.
According to The Independent, Dean was healthy before he died. He needed a machine called ECMO to help him breathe. It does the work of the lungs by getting oxygen and pumping it into the body. Carol wrote on Sunday that her son Joshua refused surgery, even though his family begged him.
“I don’t know how much more my family can take. I don’t know how much more I can take honestly,” wrote Taylor Rae Roberts, Dean’s sister, on Facebook after her brother’s death.
Boeing has faced criticism lately because of problems with its popular 737 airplane. In January 2024, a new 737 plane had a serious issue while flying. The cabin suddenly had a big problem, so an Alaska Airlines flight had to stop. It turned out that some important bolts were missing from the plane’s door, which showed there was a mistake during manufacturing.
Later In March, the FAA checked Boeing and Spirit’s work during manufacturing and found many problems. Both Boeing and Spirit are being looked into by the FAA to see if they made mistakes when making the planes. Boeing has reduced how many 737 planes it makes since the Alaska Airlines incident. Also, Boeing’s CEO, Dave Calhoun, stepped down in March, partly because of what happened with Alaska Airlines.
Dean’s lawyer was the same person who assisted another Boeing whistleblower, John “Mitch” Barnett, who disclosed publicly about problems at Boeing. Barnett was 62 years old and died in March 2024. He was found dead in his truck parked at a hotel in South Carolina. His passing has led to inquiries about the events surrounding his untimely death. Barnett had bravely revealed concerns about safety issues at Boeing, which garnered significant attention. This action made him a symbol of holding corporations accountable, especially in industries where making money is sometimes prioritized over ensuring safety.
Barnett worked at Boeing for almost thirty years. He told the New York Times in 2019 that he found small pieces of metal hanging over some wires in the planes. He said these could have caused big problems if they had touched the wires. He said the people in charge didn’t listen to him and moved him to a different part of the factory.
During his more than thirty years at Boeing, Barnett saw firsthand how one of the biggest aerospace companies operates. When he spoke up about safety problems at Boeing’s factories, some people praised him, while others questioned his actions. This shows how whistleblowers must carefully consider both their responsibility to the public and the possible negative effects on their jobs and safety.
Several people who reported wrongdoing were punished and forced to leave their jobs. William Hobek, a quality manager, was fired because he refused to falsify records for a missing assembly. He received a bad performance review even though someone from Human Resources said it was unfair.
Cynthia Kitchens, another quality manager, complained about her boss, Elton Wright, who pushed her against a wall and yelled at her for reporting problems on the production line. She was fired in 2016, despite battling cancer. John Woods, a quality engineer, lost his job when he refused to approve a shortcut to fix a plane part. Later, the FAA said he was right not to approve it.
Sam Salehpour and John Barnett, both former Boeing employees, said there were safety problems and mistakes in how Boeing manufactures its planes. According to Forbes, Sam Salehpour testified before a Senate subcommittee on April 17, 2024, where he told senators he received “physical threats” after raising concerns about the manufacturing process for the 787 Dreamliner and the 777.
After raising his concerns to his superiors, Salehpour said he was sidelined, told to shut up, and received physical threats—telling the senators his boss said during a meeting “I would have killed someone who said what you said.” He detailed one instance in which took his car in for maintenance after he noticed a one-month-old tire was losing too much air—and the mechanics found that a large nail had been deliberately placed into the rubber.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., presented a photo of the tire to the subcommittee, but Salehpour said he did not have proof the nail was inserted by a coworker. Salehpour also told Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., that his boss called him on his personal phone, not his assigned work phone, and “berated me and chewed me out” after pulling him out of a meeting in which he tried to raise his concerns about the 777.
Salehpour agreed that there was a “culture of retaliation” at Boeing, and said “when you address the quality issues, and that’s all I have done, I have not made it personal, then you get threatened.” Despite the alleged threats, Salehpour said he would return to work at Boeing after his testimony—and his job is currently protected by federal whistleblower laws.
Barnett’s death is more than just a personal tragedy. It has made people pay more attention to how safe Boeing’s planes are, especially because of recent problems with the 737 Max planes. His death happened during a time when Boeing was already getting a lot of bad attention, like when a door plug blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight. Now, both the public and the people who make the rules are looking at Boeing more closely.
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Barnett’s family and lawyers say he was brave and honest, with really strong morals. They say he wanted to change the way things were done at Boeing. They want a really careful investigation into his death, leaving no stone unturned. Barnett’s brother mentioned that Barnett had PTSD and anxiety attacks because of how tough things were at work, and they think that might have played a part in what happened to him.
Barnett described Boeing as a psychological torture chamber for anyone who cared about safety. A 2000 law makes fighting back nearly impossible. Maureen Tkacik, investigations editor at the Prospect, writes about Boeing’s lethally corrupt culture of financialization and whistleblower intimidation in this great publication. Tkacik points out, these engineers and managers that Boeing targeted for intimidation and retaliation are the very same staff who are supposed to be performing inspections of behalf of the FAA. In other words, Boeing has spent years attacking its own regulator, with total impunity. (Source)
Tkacik writes: Later that afternoon, I got a text message from one of Barnett’s old Boeing co-workers who’d been fired from the Charleston plant for reporting a safety risk created by shoddy manufacturing. An FAA investigation had vindicated most of the whistleblower’s allegations, only after they’d withdrawn their AIR 21 complaint out of fear Boeing would force them to pay legal fees. Inside the whistleblower’s text was a photo of a wheel missing two lug nuts; the car had been mysteriously wobbling, so they’d pulled over to check. It had been years since they’d left the company, but they could not shake the sense that someone, somewhere was still trying to exact revenge on them for speaking out. “If anything happens,” they told me, not for the first time, “I’m not suicidal.”
