Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Boeing whistleblower gets "Epsteined" as 787 suffers another mishap

"Sorry, I just woke up-I was dreaming that my Pez dispenser spoke to me"

John Barnett, the former Boeing Quality Manager, was found dead in a parking lot in Charleston, SC on Saturday. The cause of death was immediately determined to be a "self-inflicted gunshot wound," police claim. So the troubled aircraft manufacturer has yet another gossip-worthy situation going.

Barnett, 62, gave "stark warnings" about the problems he was seeing in on two Boeing passenger jet models. In one case, he discovered substandard parts were being used and in another, Dawn dishwashing soap was being used as a lubricant. We all know from tv commercials that Dawn is great on birds caught in oil spills, but it isn't the best thing to use as a lubricant--specific lubricants are the best thing to use for the lubricating jobs intended for them.

Barnett had also claimed Boeing executives were hiding the company's safety issues rather than addressing them, possibly because it cost money to fix the problems.

"My concerns are with the 737 and 787 because those programs have really embraced the theory that quality is overhead and non-value-added," Barnett told TMZ after the infamous Jan. 5 incident when a door plug blew off an Alaska Air 737 MAX 9 that depressurized the cabin and exposed passengers to open air and great views shortly after takeoff.


Not long after the Alaska Airline event, Chilean airline LATAM flight from Australia to New Zealand experienced a "technical event" on Monday in mid-flight that "caused a strong movement," resulting in about 50 people being injured causing mucho cursing in Spanish. The passenger jet was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, one of the two models (the other is the troubled 737 MAX) described in Barnett's whistleblower complaint.

The Federal Aviation Administration said two weeks ago that it "will mandate a fix for a new 737 MAX design problem discovered by Boeing that, although it’s a remote possibility, could theoretically disable the jet’s engine anti-ice system." 

According to the same report, "Airlines have reported a separate issue with a similar system on Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner that has caused what the FAA calls 'relatively minor' damage to the engine inlets on some two dozen of these wide-body jets in service."

Boeing has been given three years to address the problem on the MAX and 30 months to get the 787 fixed.

So did John Barnett off himself or was it a professional Epstein-esque job? Maybe we'll never know, but somehow, somewhere, someone is going to blame Trump.

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