A former employee of Boeing discovered deceased in March, had leveled accusations against the company for numerous violations of US law in testimony provided shortly before his passing.

John Barnett asserted that the company endeavored to diminish quality inspections at a facility responsible for producing 787 planes.

As a former quality control manager, Barnett was in the process of offering formal legal testimony against the aircraft manufacturer.

Officials confirmed that the 62-year-old's demise, occurring two days subsequent to his testimony, resulted from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

While expressing sadness over Barnett's passing, Boeing stated that the concerns he raised had undergone review and resolution.

The aerospace behemoth's safety protocols are currently under scrutiny, partly due to an incident in January involving the detachment of a disused door from a new 737 Max shortly after takeoff.

The lawyers representing Barnett have now released the transcript of his deposition, spanning over 140 pages.

Barnett had served at Boeing for over three decades before retiring on health grounds in 2017. He subsequently initiated a lawsuit against the company, alleging retaliation from management following his disclosure of significant safety concerns, an accusation denied by the company.

The majority of Barnett's deposition delves into the period post-2010, after his transition from Boeing's Everett, Washington facility to a newly established factory in North Charleston.

This facility was established to aid in the assembly of the 787 Dreamliner, a cutting-edge airliner predominantly deployed for long-haul flights.

Barnett had previously disclosed to the BBC and others that managers at the North Charleston plant routinely disregarded formal procedures in their pursuit of expeditious aircraft production.

In his deposition, he provided more detail on these allegations, in support of his legal complaint that he had been "denigrated, humiliated and treated with scorn" by senior managers, who had subjected him to a gaslighting campaign and created a "hostile work environment" as a result of his actions.

A key part of his testimony focused on the alleged falsification of records relating to problems within the production process and in particular the logging of defective or substandard parts.


He claimed employees had been under pressure to circumvent established procedures, set out in Boeing's own Quality Management System, to save time. A common theme within the factory, he said, was: "We don't have time to follow processes, we're building airplanes".

This, he said, had allowed "an awful lot" of faulty parts onto the production line, while others had simply been lost. These included two large sections of the aircraft fuselage, which "weren't anywhere to be found".

In one specific instance, he claimed a contaminated and faulty tube designed to work in an oxygen system had been removed from a scrap bin and might have been installed on an aircraft that was now in service.

Such parts normally had to be carefully sterilized to reduce the risk of unwanted chemical reactions. Without that, he said, there was a risk that if the system was activated, it could cause an explosion that would "bring the whole plane down".

He suggested that there had been "countless" occasions on which paperwork had been falsified, and agreed with his lawyer's suggestion that each violation of procedure amounted to a "criminal offense and felony".

Mr Barnett was also deeply critical of what he saw as a drive at the South Carolina plant to reduce quality control inspections, again to speed up the manufacturing process.

"So the push for probably the last 15 to 20 years at Boeing is to eliminate quality [inspections]", he said. "But when here in Charleston they put that push on steroids".

Boeing's own lawyers focused more on Mr Barnett's claims that he had been retaliated against, and appeared to question his assertion that his safety concerns had not been taken seriously at the time.

In a statement given to the BBC, Boeing said: "We are saddened by Mr Barnett's passing and our thoughts continue to be with his family and friends.

"Boeing reviewed and addressed quality issues that Mr Barnett raised before he retired in 2017, as well as other quality issues referred to in the complaint. Engineering analysis determined the issues he raised did not affect airplane safety".

It also drew attention to a decision made earlier in Mr Barnett's case, in 2020, in which the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration concluded the company had not breached whistleblower protection law.

It added: "We appreciate employees who raise their voice, and we have systems in place to encourage them to speak up confidentially or anonymously.

"To ensure the safety, quality and conformance of our products, we investigate all allegations of improper behaviour. We then work diligently to address them and make improvements."

Mr Barnett's lawsuit is expected to continue. It will be taken forward by his mother Vicky Stokes and his brother Rodney Barnett as representatives of his estate.

The case is now expected to go to trial in September.

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