Corruption is Everywhere > Another courageous man blows whistle on Boeing - afraid to fly now

 

Boeing 737 whistleblower says he found

100s of defects on plane parts every day

By Kathryn Mannie  Global News

Posted May 9, 2024 12:25 pm

 4 min read

A ground worker approaches a WestJet Airlines Boeing 737 Max aircraft after it arrived at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, B.C., on Thursday, January 21, 2021. WestJet has issued a 72-hour lockout notice to the union representing its mechanics, and warns a work stoppage could happen as early as Tuesday. Darryl Dyck/CP Images

A whistleblower at Boeing’s largest supplier is going public with concerning claims that he would find hundreds of defects on Boeing 737 fuselage parts each day during his time there as a quality inspector.

Santiago Paredes worked for Spirit AeroSystems for 12 years, until he resigned in 2022. He told CBS News and the BBC in exclusive interviews that he had enough of Spirit management telling him to conceal and downplay manufacturing issues in his reports.

“If quality mattered, I would still be at Spirit,” Paredes told CBS News. “It was very rare for us to look at a job and not find any defects.”

Kansas-based Spirit AeroSystems used to be a part of Boeing, but was spun off into a separate company in 2005. The company manufactures plane parts that are sent to Boeing for final assembly. Notably, Spirit produces the door plug panel for the Boeing 737 Max 9s. The company, and Boeing, came under intense scrutiny in January after a door plug panel blew off a 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines in mid-air.

0:48

US Department of Justice opens criminal investigation over Alaska Airlines mid-flight door blowout

Another whistleblower, Joshua Dean, who worked as a quality engineer at Spirit died early this month at 45 years old after a sudden illness. He too claimed to have noticed manufacturing defects on Boeing 737 planes.

Dean’s death came two months after Boeing whistleblower John Barrett (sic - Barnett) was found dead of an apparent suicide a day after testifying against the planemaker. And, the morning he was going to complete his testimony!

Paredes told CBS News that he developed a fear of flying after working at Spirit. The outlet says it reviewed photos of dented fuselages and a wrench left behind in a supposedly finished part, set to be delivered to Boeing.

“Knowing what I know about the 737, it makes me very uncomfortable when I fly on one of them,” he said.

Paredes said he felt pressured by Spirit management to ignore manufacturing defects so the company could produce more plane parts faster. He alleges he earned the nickname “Showstopper” from his bosses, because defects Paredes would flag in his reports would end up delaying deliveries.

In particular, Paredes flagged that some 737 parts would come off the production line missing key fasteners, hardware that joins pieces of the plane together. He’s concerned that the defects could cause safety issues with some of Boeing’s planes.

“It’s a recipe for disaster,” Paredes told CBS. “It was just a matter of time before something bad happened.”

2:57

Business Matters: FAA says Boeing can’t increase 737 Max production until quality, safety culture improved

Paredes noticed the safety culture at Spirit worsened in 2018, when Spirit went from producing about 30 fuselages per month to over 50. In 2022, he said he received an email from his bosses to be less specific about where he was finding issues with plane parts in order to speed up his inspections.

He emailed his managers back, saying he found the request was “unethical” and put him “in a very uncomfortable situation.”

“I was put in a place where if I said no, I was gonna get fired,” Paredes recounted. “If I said yes, I was admitting that I was gonna do something wrong.”

In retaliation, he says, Paredes was demoted from his position as a team leader. He ended up filing a formal complaint with company HR and he was found to be wrongfully demoted. Paredes was reinstated to his former position, but he said, at that point, he no longer wanted to work for Spirit.

“It takes a toll on you and I was tired of fighting,” said Paredes. “I was tired of trying to do the right thing.”

In his interview with the BBC, Paredes claims that Boeing “knew that Spirit was sending fuselages with many defects.”

“Spirit was wrong for sending defective fuselages, but at the same time, Boeing was also wrong for accepting them,” he said.

In a statement to CBS, a Boeing spokesperson said that the planemaker has long employed a team to inspect fuselages built by Spirit and fix defects. Outgoing CEO Dave Calhoun told CNBC that increased oversight of Spirit’s operations have reduced the defect rate in fuselages by about 80 per cent.

That's somehow rather disturbing!

1:52

Boeing CEO to step down as embattled plane maker faces quality and safety crisis

Paredes traces the safety culture issues at Spirit back to Boeing. He said that many leaders in the company stayed on after Spirit split from Boeing back in 2005.

“I think the culture was bad already,” he said. “Over time it just became worse.”

Spirit told the BBC that it “strongly disagree(d)” with Paredes’ allegations against the company. “We are vigorously defending against his claims.”

Spirit spokesman Joe Buccino told CBS that the company remains “committed to addressing concerns and continuously improving workplace safety standards.”

“We encourage all Spirit employees with concerns to come forward, safe in knowing they will be protected.”

Boeing maintains that the 737 Max is safe.

On Thursday, two Boeing 737 planes were involved in accidents within a matter of hours, with one plane’s tire bursting during landing in Turkey, while another plane skidded off the runway in Senegal.

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Corruption is Everywhere > Did Boeing drive John Barnett to commit suicide? If, indeed, he committed suicide.

 

It would be child's play for a company with the resources of Boeing to threaten a man's family leaving him with suicide as the only way out. But did he really commit suicide?

There's something seriously wrong in a world where honesty and integrity are punished.

Whistleblower John Barnett claimed Boeing managers

spied on him before his alleged suicide

By 

Social Links forHaley Brown and

 

Social Links forSteve Helling

Published March 20, 2024, 8:56 p.m. ET

Boeing whistleblower John Barnett claimed the company’s management had been spying on him in the bombshell court case he was working on when he was mysteriously found dead.

The quality control engineer’s attorneys, Robert Turkewitz and Brian Knowles, released the complaint Wednesday out of transparency after Barnett was found dead in his pickup truck at a Charleston, South Carolina, hotel on March 9.

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John Barnett’s attorneys said he seemed “in good spirits” priori to his death.

Courtesy of the Barnett Family

The lawsuit makes a number of bombshell claims about Boeing — currently under scrutiny after a series of quality control problems, including a door plug falling off mid-flight — charging they retaliated against Barnett when he tried to raise the alarm about defaults in their manufacturing process.

Barnett said he suffered numerous instances of retaliation after internally reporting the airplane giant’s failure to comply with Federal Aviation Authority safety standards.

The lawsuit said he was subjected to a “gaslighting campaign in which he was continually harassed, denigrated, humiliated, and treated with scorn and contempt by upper management.”

Another section of the lawsuit stated: “In June 2014, Barnett submitted a complaint to Corporate Ethics against [redacted] for violating procedures, ignoring process violations, pushing Barnett to ‘work in the grey areas,’ and having another manger spy on Barnett.

“Although Barnett’s complaint was substantiated by Corporate Ethics, no action was taken to address the complaints.”

Barnett retired in 2017 after more than 30 years of service with Boeing, which he said was 10 years earlier than he had planned due to the actions he claimed were taken against him.

“That’s the way it’s done there. There were always moles who would throw you under the bus to look good to the big bosses. They weren’t about team unity; you never know who you could trust,” a Boeing mid-level manager, who asked to remain anonymous over fear of losing their job, told The Post Wednesday.

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An employee at Boeing told The Post that Barnett made “powerful enemies” for refusing to stop documenting defects while he worked at the airplane giant.

AFP via Getty Images

The complaint — which redacted names of specific managers — also claimed during meetings Barnett’s senior manager had, on numerous occasions, announced to the team Barnett was responsible for the rest of the team having to “be away from their families” and work overtime due to his insistence on documenting procedure violations or equipment defects.

Managers complained Barnett used email to maintain a record of defects rather than “face to face” communication — even though it is required by FAA Standards and Regulations to document defects in writing, according to the complaint.

At one point Barnett put in an email in September 2014: “Leadership wants nothing in email so they maintain plausible deniability.”

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Barnett’s attorneys said the whistleblower suffered health problems because of the retaliation from upper management.

Boeing’s response to Barnett’s filing is sealed and the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.

In a statement to WSCS the company said, “We are saddened by Mr. Barnett’s passing, and our thoughts are 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.”

Attorneys for Boeing had filed a motion to dismiss the suit, but it was shot down by a judge in May 2022.

In 2019, two years after Barnett quit, the company also created a Speak Up program so employees could flag concerns about product quality and safety. However, an FAA report published February said it was not widely used, with employees preferring to speak to their managers instead.

Barnett’s lawsuit also claimed his name was number 1 of 49 listed in an email from upper management titled “Quality Managers to get rid of”.

As a result of the years of retaliation, Barnett’s attorneys said their client began experiencing chest pains, shortness of breath, nausea and vomiting, which Barnett’s doctor attributed to the stress from Boeing.

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Barnett’s attorneys said managers were forcing the whistleblower to commit felonies when they asked him not to document defects in writing.

CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Barnett ‘s attorneys argued that by being forced not to properly document defects and procedure errors, he was being forced to commit criminal felonies, so he had no choice but to leave the company.

“It is a criminal felony offense to not properly document the build record of an aircraft. By pressuring Barnett to not follow processes … Boeing was ordering Barnett to commit a felony offense.”

Barnett faced a repetitive and systemic pattern of being requested to “violate, circumvent, and ignore the law, and to place profits over safety and quality,” the complaint stated.

Barnett was seeking damages including backed pay, pay for the 10 years of early retirement, lost bonuses, lost health and life insurance benefits, medical expenses, loss of 401-K retirement and matching

benefits, money for emotional distress and mental anguish, compensatory damages and attorney’s fees.

The preliminary determination by the Charleston coroner’s office is that Barnett died of a “self-inflicted gunshot wound” but his attorneys have expressed skepticism over that ruling.

Ex-Aide Outs Mahmoud Abbas’ Rampant Theft from International Donors

It's not so much that he is stealing from Int'l donors, but he is stealing from Palestinians. Keeping his people in poverty helps keep them angry at Israel, even as the real villain is among them.

Yasser Jadallah, former senior advisor to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, reveals corruption and theft of funds by Abbas himself and other top Palestinian cronies.

By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel

One of the biggest complaints the Palestinians have is actually against the Palestinians.

For years, ordinary Palestinians have complained about official corruption. It started decades ago in Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, where billions of dollars in donated funds disappeared into the PLO-controlled bank accounts. There was no paper trail. There was no accountability.

After the Oslo Accords in 1993 there was hope that the Palestinian Authority that came into office would finally be responsible with money ostensibly destined for the Palestinians. The Europeans and other donor countries kept pushing for transparency while Palestinian leaders always denied there was any corruption, but the Palestinians themselves always knew there was something fishy.

Tens of billions of dollars in donations over the years seemed to be getting them nowhere, and nobody could say for sure where all that money goes.

Lest you think all Palestinians live in poverty, this is the humble abode of Palestinian businessman

Mohamed Abdel-Hadi

That fishy feeling got a big confirmation recently when a whistleblower in Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’s office fled to Europe to seek political asylum in Belgium and started revealing what was going on.

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs recently published a translation of some of the damning comments from Yasser Jadallah, a senior official in President Mahmoud Abbas’ Political Department, confirming what Palestinians and Israelis have been saying for years: There is major corruption related to the theft of funds given to the PA by international organizations.

In a video released by a Palestinian news agency associated with Hamas, which always loves to poke Abbas in the eye, Jadallah claimed that the funds in the Palestinian Ministry of Finance listed under the heading “EU assistance and Arab states” were mostly transferred to the Palestinian presidency and from there to secret accounts known to only three people: Abbas, his private secretary Mrs. Intesar Abu Amara, and Mahmoud Salameh, Deputy Chief of Staff in the PA chairman’s office.

Jadallah claimed the funds disappeared after entering the PA bank accounts and were transferred to accounts with fictitious names, as well as to accounts with the names of Abbas’s grandchildren.

“We have passed this information onto European MPs,” Jadallah said in the video.

Jadallah said Abbas ordered his office accounts to be destroyed every six months, but in reality, they are destroyed every day for “security reasons.”

Before fleeing to Europe, Jadallah said Palestinian security agents abducted him twice and tried to stop him from revealing the corruption. PA sources denied the allegations and accused Jadallah of being a disgruntled former civil servant trying to settle scores by spreading lies.

Yasser Jadallah’s video was circulated via WhatsApp across the PA-run territories and sparked considerable interest. The PA’s silence on the issue only heightens suspicions that there is substance to the news.

The corruption issue appears to be a key reason why most Palestinians are not interested in a new intifada to fight Israel’s upcoming extension of sovereignty to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.