New Delhi: Joshua Dean, who had pointed out the allegedly poor production standards of a Boeing supplier, has died after a sudden illness. The 45-year-old is the second whistleblower connected with Boeing to die in as many months after John Barnett, who died by suicide earlier in March.
Dean was a former quality auditor at Spirit AeroSystems, which made fuselage for the 737 MAX aircraft. He alleged that he was fired after alerting people about manufacturing defects at the company’s Witchita plant in Kansas.
He died after a two-week struggle with a fast-spreading infection, according to social media posts by his family members. On Friday, his mother said he contracted an MRSA infection, causing pneumonia and a stroke. She said her son was “fighting for his life”.
Dean’s aunt, Carol Parsons, confirmed his death, telling The Seattle Times: “It was brutal what he went through… heartbreaking.”
Dean’s health suddenly deteriorated after he had trouble breathing and was put on an ECMO machine, which takes over heart and lung function.
Pointed out defects in 2022
Dean, a mechanical engineer, first joined Spirit AeroSystems in 2019 before being let go during the COVID-19 pandemic. He returned to the company in May 2021 as a quality auditor.
Dean first pointed out defects in the manufacturing process in October 2022, according to The Seattle Times.
Mechanics were improperly drilling holes in the aft (rear) pressure bulkhead of the MAX — an issue he is said to have flagged with the management. Nothing was done at the time, he said, as reported by the newspaper.
However, he was fired in April 2023, after Spirit AeroSystems notified Boeing of an improper process of attaching the vertical tail onto the fuselage for a few models of the 737 MAX 7, MAX 8 and MAX 8-200 models, as reported by The Seattle Times.
“Spirit has notified our customer, Boeing, that we have identified a quality issue on the aft fuselage section of certain models of the 737 fuselage that Spirit builds. This is not an immediate safety of flight issue,” said Spirit in a statement in April 2023.
In August 2023, Spirit AeroSystems conceded there were “elongated fastener holes” in the aft pressure bulkhead. The Wichita-headquartered company added that it was working with “our customers” to address the “impacted” units.
It also said that Boeing had determined there was “no immediate safety of flight concern associated with this issue for the 737 fleet and that the in-service fleet may continue to operate”.
After Spirit acknowledged the issues, Dean filed a safety complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
In November 2023, he filed a whistleblower complaint with the US Department of Labor, alleging wrongful termination by Spirit AeroSystems.
Boeing under the lens
Boeing’s quality-control standards have come under intense scrutiny in the past few months after a door plug — a filler piece added to the fuselage, where an emergency exit could be added in a different setting — blew out from an Alaskan Airlines flight in January 2024. The plane was new, having been delivered to Alaskan Airlines only in October 2023.
Safety concerns have abounded about manufacturing processes after a first Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed in Indonesia in October 2018, just after take-off. A second MAX 8 plane went down in March 2019 in Ethiopia, once again after take-off.
The crashes were due to the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) – a feature that is supposed to stabilise the aircraft. Between March 2019 and December 2020, the 737 MAX range was grounded.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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