Boeing whistleblower Joshua Dean, 45, who accused supplier of ignoring safety flaws in 737 Max production died suddenly this week

Dean who was fired after accusing a Boeing supplier of ignoring defect warnings, died on April 30

His death comes almost two months after Boeing’s former quality control manager John Barnett took his own life

Dean was fired from his job as a quality auditor at Boeing supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, based in Wichita, KS in April 2023

Spirit manufactures the door plug which blew out midair on an Alaska Airlines flight in January – which has happened on other Dreamliners from Boeing since 

A second whistleblower in the ongoing saga of quality issues in manufacturing by aircraft giant Boeing is dead in a two-month span. 
Joshua Dean who raised the alarm about defects in 737 Max jets has died suddenly on Tuesday. Dean, 45, previously said he was fired from his job as a quality auditor at Spirit AeroSystems in April 2023,  after he questioned quality standards at the Boeing supplier’s plant in Wichita, Kansas.
Spirit manufactured the door plug on the Boeing jet which shockingly blew out midair on an Alaska Airlines flight in January, 2024. 
Earlier this year, Dean died in hospital on Tuesday after a sudden illness his family posted on social media, spoke with NPR about being fired. ‘I think they were sending out a message to anybody else. If you are too loud, we will silence you,’ he said.  This came against the background of the untimely demise of John Barnett.

Joshua ‘Josh’ Dean, [photo], passed died April 30, after he was hospitalized complaining of shortness of breath. He was fired in 2023 from his job as a quality auditor at fuselage manufacturer, Spirit AeroSystems allegedly, after he’d questioned standards at the Boeing supplier’s plant in Wichita, KS

Two months earlier whistleblower John “Mitch” Barnett, [photo], committed suicide in the midst of a legal action against Boeing. The 62-year-old former quality control manager at Boeing, reportedly, killed himself in Louisiana in March

Barnett, a former Boeing manager who raised safety questions about the aircraft maker worried that his bosses were spying on him, his attorneys allege. The body of the 62-year-old Louisiana resident was found on March 9, in a car outside a Holiday Inn with what appeared to be a ‘self-inflicted gunshot wound,’  the Charleston County Coroner’s Office said
At the time, his lawyers referenced a full list of Barnett’s complaint against his employer as outlined in a legal complaint for wrongful retaliation filed in 2021.
Josh Dean had filed a complaint against Spirit with the Federal Aviation Administration alleging serious quality failings at its production facility. He testified in a shareholder lawsuit against the company. Boeing’s share prices since took a severe nosedive by almost 10 percent to $173.86 over the past six months as more safety concerns have come to light. 

Joshua Dean was employed by Spirit AeroSystems based in Wichita, Kansas, where he was fired in 2023, allegedly, because because he pointed out that holes were wrongly drilled in a fuselage – A finding that his employer denied

Carol Parsons confirmed the death her nephew Josh Dean in a series of Facebook posts, as did other family members.
Parsons confirmed that Dean who lived in Wichita went to a local hospital after experiencing breathing difficulties. He reportedly developed MRSA, pneumonia and needed to be intubated.
‘I am grateful for the prayers of my family and friends for this young man,’ she wrote on Facebook. 
‘He passed away yesterday morning, and his absence will be deeply felt. We will always love you Josh.’

Boeing has long denied Dean, and other whistleblower claims that the company willfully ignored safety warnings. 
As recently as Monday, Dean’s mother said in a social media post hat her son was conscious and communicating with doctors: ‘At the time, a doctor told him that he had a ’50/50 chance of living,’ she wrote. 
‘Josh is very depressed, frightened, and doing a lot of sleeping and not responding as much as he was a few days ago and has not been on any sedation or pain meds.’
In his final days, Dean was breathing through an ECMO machine: ‘The doctor asked him if he wanted the machine turned off, and he wouldn’t respond,’ his mother added. 
‘I told the doctor he doesn’t know what he wants, I’m sure he wants to live.’
She went on to say that her son underwent a procedure to investigate the damage done to his lungs through the pneumonia, which he pulled through. 
Doctors found that Dean contracted MRSA and tested positive for influenza B, while a further scan found that he also suffered a stroke.
 ‘I am grateful for the prayers of my family and friends for this young man. He passed away yesterday morning, and his absence will be deeply felt. We will always love you Josh,’ Dean’s posted on Facebook Wednesday. The tragedy for the family is that Dean’s brother Justin died this January 14, at the age of 26.

Earlier this year, Dean speaking with NPR about being fired said: ‘I think they [Boeing], were sending out a message to anybody else. If you are too loud, we will silence you’. Earlier in March when Barnett died, one employee at Boeing revealed that Barnett made “powerful enemies” for refusing to stop documenting defects while he worked at the aircraft manufacturer

Adding to the catalog of mishaps with aircraft built by the manufacturer, in early January, an unused emergency exit door blew off a brand-new Boeing 737 Max shortly after take-off from Portland International, sparking a still-ongoing DOJ investigation

In January, Dean told The Wall Street Journal that he was fired because he pointed out that holes were wrongly drilled in a fuselage – A finding that his employer denied. 
‘It is known at Spirit that if you make too much noise and cause too much trouble, you will be moved. It doesn’t mean you completely disregard stuff, but they don’t want you to find everything and write it up,’ he said. 
In March, when John Barnett, another Boeing whistleblower in the midst of a legal action against Boeing died and it was ruled a suicide, his friends contested the report, revealing that he told beforehand ‘if anything happens to me, it’s not suicide’. 
Coincidentally Dean and Barnett were represented by the same attorney, Brian Knowles, who turned down the opportunity to speculate on the sudden deaths of his two clients.
Dean whose father and grandfather previously worked at he same Wichita plant, told NPR that he quickly grew frustrated with the workplace culture: ‘Now, I’m not saying they don’t want you to go out there and inspect a job. You know, they do. But if you make too much trouble, you will get the Josh treatment. You will get what happened to me,’ he said. 

In April a third whistle blower, Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour, before the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Investigations, testified that excessive force applied to fit panels together on the 787 assembly line, raised the risk of fatigue, or microscopic cracking in the material that could cause it break apart

In April, testifying before the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Investigations, a whistleblower – Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour – said excessive force was applied to fit panels together on the 787 assembly line, raising the risk of fatigue, or microscopic cracking in the material that could cause it break apart. 
On how midsections of a fuselage are brought together, Salehpour explains that Shims are added to fill gaps, holes are drilled and cleaned, and fasteners attached to apply ‘pull-up force’ that 99% of the time results in margins no greater than .005 inches (0.127 millimeters) apart — the width of a human hair. 
A gap problem was discovered in 2019 between two panels, led to design and assembly changes, Boeing said.

Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour testifies before the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Investigations 

Salehpour is the latest in a line of Boeing whistleblowers to come forward, often alleging retaliation for raising safety concerns, claims that after he raised safety concerns about the 787, Boeing transferred him to work on an older widebody plane, the 777. He told the Seattle Times that he saw workers jumping on fuselage panels to get them in alignment, which Boeing disputes.
The FAA is investigating Salehpour’s claims. Whereas cracks have been found on metallic parts, including a piece above where the wings join the fuselage, and Boeing issued inspection guidelines for those parts, the officials said.
Responding to the myriad complaints about quality control, Boeing says it is ‘fully confident’ in the two aircraft types affected. 
The average 787 makes 600 flights a year. Boeing conducted testing replicating 165,000 flights with no findings of fatigue in the composite structure, Steve Chisholm, Boeing’s vice president of structural engineering, said, adding that the company’s planes already in use are proving safe.
671 Dreamliners have undergone the intensive inspections for 6-year-old planes and eight have undergone 12-year inspections with no evidence of fatigue in the composite skins, Chisholm said.