John  Barnett who had worked for Boeing for 32 years until 2017, who raised the concerns about the firm’s production standards has been found dead in his truck in the hotel car park in the US according to the Charleston County Coroner. The police are investigating the 62 year-old’s death who had died from a self-inflicted wound on 9^th march .

In the days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company. Boeing said it was saddened to hear of Mr. Barnett’s death.

From 2010, he worked as quality manager at the North Charleston plant making the 787 Dreamliner, a state-of-the-art airliner used mainly on long-haul routes.

In 2019, Mr. Barnett told that under pressure workers had been deliberately fitting sub-standard parts to aircraft on the production line. He also lamented he had uncovered serious problems with oxygen systems, which could mean one in four breathing masks would not work in an emergency  25 per cent failure rate to deploy in a real-life emergency.

He also said after starting his work in South Carolina, he had become concerned that the push to get new aircraft built urgently meant the assembly process was rushed and safety was compromised, something which the company denied.

He said in some cases sub-standard parts had even been removed from scrap bins and fitted to planes that were being built to prevent delays on the production line. Barnett said although he alerted managers his concerns, no action had been taken.

Although Boeing denied his concerns, but a 2017 review by the US regulator the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did uphold some of Mr. Barnett’s concerns and established 53 non-conforming parts in the factory was unknown, and that they were considered lost. Boeing was ordered to take remedial action. Regarding the faulty oxygen cylinders the company said in 2017 it denied that any of them were actually fitted on aircraft.

Production standards at both Boeing and its key supplier Spirit Aero systems are under intense scrutiny following  an incident in early January when an unused emergency exit door blew off a brand-new Boeing 737 Max shortly after take-off from Portland International Airport. A preliminary report from the US National Transportation Safety Board reveals that four key bolts designed to hold the door securely in place, were not fitted. Last week, the FAA said, a six-week audit of the company had found “multiple instances where the company allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements.”