Boeing: “What he experienced was brutal”, a second whistleblower dies after two weeks of excruciating suffering

Joshua Dean avait déclaré avoir découvert un grave défaut de fabrication sur les 737 MAX. Li Jianguo – XinHua/MAXPPP

Joshua Dean was a former quality controller at Spirit AeroSystems, a supplier to Boeing. A whistleblower, the forty-year-old died on Tuesday April 30, 2024, lost to a devastating illness in two weeks.

He died on Tuesday April 30, 2024 from a "sudden, rapidly spreading infection", reports Seattle Time.

Joshua Dean, a former quality controller at Spirit AeroSystems, a Boeing supplier, was one of the first whistleblowers to claim that management of the aircraft parts maker attempted a cover-up manufacturing defects in the 737 MAX. He died of the disease in two weeks, at the age of 45, in critical condition, according to his aunt Carol Parsons, quoted by the Seattle Time.

"He was having trouble breathing"

The latter says that he had gone to the hospital a little over two weeks ago "because’ he was having trouble breathing". Intubated, he developed pneumonia, then a serious bacterial infection. His condition then deteriorated rapidly.

A CT scan also revealed that Joshua Dean had suffered a stroke. In the end, doctors considered amputating both hands and two feet. "What he experienced was brutal", his aunt told the Seattle Time. It broke my heart.

In October 2022, Joshua Dean declared having discovered a serious manufacturing defect on the 737 MAX. He claimed that mechanics had incorrectly drilled the holes in the pressurization partitions, recalls Le Parisien. The problem was publicly revealed in August 2023, a few months after Joshua Dean was fired.

Suicide of a former Boeing employee

His death occurred a few weeks after that of John Barnett. This former Boeing employee killed himself in the United States on Saturday March 9, 2024. A few days earlier, he had testified against the American aircraft manufacturer and alerted to problems of construction.

"Every day we found things left on planes. In a 787, after a test flight, we found a ladder in the stabilizer. If it had fallen on the jack system, the plane would have gone up in smoke", indicated John Barnett, as an example, in the documentary "Downfall : The Boeing Affair", streaming on Netflix in 2022.

Brian Knowles, the lawyer representing the two victims, refuses to make a connection between these two deaths.