John “Mitch” Barnett, 62, a whistleblower in the midst of giving depositions alleging Boeing retaliated against him for complaints about quality lapses, was found dead from a gunshot wound Saturday in Charleston, South Carolina.
The Charleston County Coroner’s Office reported that “his death appears to result from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
In two full days of depositions, Barnett was questioned by Boeing lawyers on Thursday and by his own lawyers, Robert Turkewitz and Brian Knowles, on Friday.
Barnett, a former Snohomish County resident living in Louisiana, was scheduled to continue the deposition with his lawyers Saturday. When he didn’t show up, Turkewitz and Knowles called his hotel to ask for a welfare check. Barnett was found dead in his truck parked at the hotel.
In a statement, Turkewitz and Knowles called Barnett “a brave, honest man of the highest integrity.”
“He cared dearly about his family, his friends, the Boeing company, his Boeing co-workers, and the pilots and people who flew on Boeing aircraft,” the lawyers wrote. “We have rarely met someone with a more sincere and forthright character.”
The statement went on to say that Barnett “was in very good spirits and really looking forward to putting this phase of his life behind him and moving on.”
“We didn’t see any indication he would take his own life. No one can believe it. We are all devastated,” Turkewitz and Knowles wrote. “The Charleston police need to investigate this fully and accurately and tell the public what they find out.”
Barnett’s niece Katelyn Gillespie said Tuesday he was the fun uncle of the family.
She was very close to him. In Louisiana, where he came from, Barnett was into dirt-track car racing. He got Gillespie into race driving with him and tinkering with cars every weekend.
Gillespie said he was “stressed and depressed” by the latest flood of quality problems at Boeing and by the strain of his case against the company for harassing him and forcing him from his job.
She said Barnett was “the most selfless person” in private life and in his legal campaign against Boeing. He was pursuing the company not for money but to help save lives, she said.
“He battled a lot due to the Boeing stuff,” Gillespie said. “It took a major toll on him.”
In a statement, the Charleston Police Department declined media interviews, saying the case has gained “global attention” and that it will “ensure that the investigation is not influenced by speculation but is led by facts and evidence.”
Boeing in a statement said, “We are saddened by Mr. Barnett’s passing, and our thoughts are with his family and friends.”
A long struggle with Boeing
John Mitchell Barnett worked for Boeing for 32 years, starting as an electrician on the 747 jumbo jet program in Everett and working his way up to quality inspector, then manager of a quality organization. In Everett, he had top-class performance reviews.
In late 2010, he transferred to Boeing’s 787 plant in North Charleston, and there, in early 2012, he got the first performance downgrade of his career.
He reported later how a team of managers sent to South Carolina from Boeing’s unit in Missouri began to harass him for insisting on sticking to quality procedures and refusing to sign off on defective work.
Barnett informed managers about the quality shortfalls and the pressure applied to him, and he submitted an internal ethics complaint, all without success.
In January 2017, he filed a whistleblower complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
After six years of deteriorating relations with management and active harassment, he said the stress had badly affected his health, and he described himself as “broken” by Boeing. He took early retirement in March 2017.
Barnett began talking with The Seattle Times in April 2018, outlining a series of safety concerns on the 787 Dreamliner.
He described a broad failure to keep track of parts on airplanes at Boeing’s facilities in South Carolina. He spoke of thousands of defective parts that were lost in the system so that no one knew where they were.
He also reported finding a large batch of defective oxygen bottles that if installed on 787s would not have provided a flow of oxygen in case of cabin depressurization.
And he flagged a concern that certain titanium nuts being used to fasten the cabin flooring were shedding metal shavings into the electrical bays below, with the potential danger of triggering an electrical fire.
The Seattle Times chose to focus its investigation on the two specific safety issues, the defective oxygen bottles and the titanium shavings. Both were substantiated at least in part by the FAA.
A Freedom of Information Act request, which took the FAA nearly two-and-a-half years to fulfill, revealed that on the oxygen bottle issue, the FAA investigated and substantiated two out of four allegations.
The FAA found that Boeing had failed to keep records of and had not tracked the defective parts. It found that at least 53 “nonconforming parts are considered lost.”
Boeing insisted that it was just a crate of defective oxygen bottles that hadn’t been properly marked and that there were no defective bottles in service. The FAA backed Boeing’s assertion that there was no issue on any 787s in service.
Another Freedom of Information Act request on the titanium shavings issue was still not fully closed out three years later. In 2017, the FAA ordered inspections for the shavings on every 787 produced in both North Charleston and Everett.
In 2018, the FAA was still investigating the extent of the safety issue, and Boeing’s proposed corrective action was redacted from the documents received by The Seattle Times.
In all conversations with the Times, Barnett came across as a sincere person, with a genuine concern for the safety issues he had raised.
In late 2018, Barnett wrote an email to the Times summing up what he believed had been achieved by his external complaints and the press inquiries.
“I know the FAA are pushing inside Boeing to assure no future planes are delivered with this (oxygen bottle) condition, so on that front, they are doing what needs to be done,” he wrote. “I received a note on Facebook the other day from a Boeing employee in Everett saying they are still working (the titanium shavings) issue, so that’s good for future deliveries.”
“As far as those jets already delivered, they evaluated it and took appropriate action. I can’t ask for anything more on that front,” Barnett concluded. “I just hope it was an honest and thorough evaluation, but, that’s not mine to question.”
Yet Barnett said he now saw it as a major issue “that Boeing treats their Quality Managers and other Quality personnel in this manner.”
“The fact that they punished me for following procedures, for documenting process violations, for insisting the airplanes are built right seems to be more concerning” than any one specific issue, he said.
In 2019, a month after the second crash of a 737 MAX, The New York Times published a story on the quality problems with the 787 in South Carolina, highlighting Barnett’s concerns.
Later that year, for Barnett’s exposure of potential safety problems on the Boeing 787, Ralph Nader awarded him the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, which “recognizes individuals who take a public stance to advance truth and justice, at some personal risk.”
With that publicizing of his story, Barnett recently was interviewed by various media outlets as Boeing’s quality problems again became national news.
Meanwhile, his case claiming Boeing mistreated him for blowing the whistle on safety issues had slowly progressed. OSHA in 2021 found against him. He appealed that to the Department of Labor’s Office of Administrative Law Judges.
With a trial date scheduled for June, Barnett had traveled to Charleston last week from his home in Louisiana to give depositions for that appeal. His family, as representatives of his estate, may have the option to continue it.
Barnett’s wife died in 2022. He is survived by his mother, three brothers, two stepsons from a previous marriage and many nieces, nephews and grandnieces and grandnephews.
