John Barnett had worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement in 2017.
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 passing. The Charleston County coroner confirmed his death to the BBC on Monday.
It said the 62-year-old had died from a “self-inflicted” wound on 9 March and police were investigating.
I am actually at the point where I will avoid Boeing 737-MAX at booking, ask again at check-in to confirm the plane type, and if I saw one at the gate, I would refuse to board and accept the money as a loss. Unfortunately not everyone can afford re-booking like that. So f*ck Boeing and I just hope that Airbus won’t ever be that corrupt (chances are they are or will be at some point).
You paying not to fly is the optimal result for the airlines.
Perhaps the goal is to feel safe, not to damage the company.
yeah, looks like previous poster didn’t understand I value my life more than money :)
Pilots should also refuse to fly them.
I mean… It takes a bit to learn how to fly a plane. They wouldn’t really want to dispose of that skill and learn to fly Airbus instead.
I’m no pilot, but I can’t imagine these particular variants have been around so long for retraining to be a serious issue. Not when mass death is on the line and older, reliable Boeing planes still exist.
I am not sure what you are trying to say exactly, however the re-certification that should be required for the 737-MAX was exactly the reason for introducing the MCAS software to prevent the crew certified for older 737 models from pushing the nose into the ground on take-off. That, together with glossing over the major design change so that no pilot would flag “hey, this is a new plane, we should get a proper new certification for this” contributed to the two crashes, murdering 350something people over profit.
Boeing wanted to sell a new plane model with significantly altered aerodynamic behavior as a “variant” of an existing one so airlines could save cost on not having to re-certify pilots.
I’m saying if the newer, problematic planes aren’t going to be forced to ground by regulators, pilots should refuse to fly them. Surely there are plenty of planes still flying built by Boeing before they sold souls. Surely those won’t require massive retraining. Fly them instead.
If I learned anything in my time on this planet is that there are far too few people in the world willing to stand up for their principles :(
If you’re going to fly Boeing at all, what is the point in avoiding the 737-max?
Because most older Boeing models are actually robust aircraft & when the maintenance is in the hand of a capable airline, there’s nothing wrong with them from the perspective of safety. But as Boeing continues to fuck this up, and murder whistleblowers - I doubt there will be Boeing airplanes left to safely board in the future.