Mitch Barnett is the first of two Boeing whistleblowers who have died this year. Barnett is thought to have committed suicide after years of trying to get someone—anyone—to listen to his deep concerns about potentially devastating quality problems on Boeing 787 jets. Instead of paying attention, Boeing retaliated. They transferred and demoted Barnett, forcing him to retire years early. For New York Magazine, Sean Flynn tries to figure why it all went so wrong.
Mitch tried to stick to protocol, following the rules and procedures that had evolved over nearly a century of civil-aviation manufacturing. He complained repeatedly to upper management about what he considered safety flaws, like parts being swiped from one aircraft and put on another without any documentation, and to human resources for what he claimed was retaliation for complaining.
In August 2014, he found three-inch-long slivers of titanium scattered among the wiring and electrical components between the cabin floor and the cargo-hold ceiling. Those slivers came from the fasteners that hold the floor in place, which meant they would be scattered in the wiring of other planes, too. Considering the risk of an electrical short, Mitch thought those planes should be cleaned; his bosses, he alleged in his complaint, told him that would cost too much and then reassigned him.
And then there were the squibs. In the summer of 2016, dozens of the overhead units that contain the reading light and the air vent and, inside, the oxygen masks that are supposed to drop down in an emergency ended up in the MRSA. The damage was cosmetic, but they had to be disassembled, which included emptying the oxygen bottles. Normally, those bottles are triggered by a tiny explosive called a squib, which activates when you tug on the mask. But Mitch discovered a lot of those squibs didn’t work: Out of 300 he tested, 75 — one-quarter — failed. Mitch thought those bad squibs should be analyzed to figure out why a quarter of the passengers on a depressurized 787 might suffocate. Instead, he was removed from the squib investigation.
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