Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad was same that the dead Boeing whistleblower warned about in 2024, claims report

Last year, a former quality manager at Boeing reportedly warned that the factory that made the 787 Dreamliner was plagued by "shoddy work practices and poor oversight". According to a report in Gizmodo, John Barnett, who had worked for Boeing for 30 years before becoming one of its most outspoken critics, said that Boeing was building the planes with ‘sub-standard’ parts and that its mandate of speed and efficiency was endangering lives. Barnett, who refused to fly on the Dreamliner, was also involved in a legal dispute with the company at the time that he died of an apparent suicide. He is said to be one of a long list of critics who expressed concern about the company’s manufacturing practices.The report claims that the Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad killing 241 passengers was the same that Barnett had warned regulators about. Barnett had worked for the US plane giant for three decades, until his retirement in 2017 on health grounds. His death in March 2024 sparked conspiracy theories due to his involvement in the legal case against Boeing.

John Barnett's controversial suicide

Barnett retired Boeing in 2017. In March 2024, he was found dead at his motel in Charleston, South Carolina, just weeks after testifying against the aviation giant. The local coroner’s office reportedly said that Barnett appears to have died as the result of a self-inflicted gunshot. According to a BBC report, Barnett accused Boeing of "denigrating his character and hampering his career because of the issues he pointed out - charges rejected by Boeing." At the time of his death, Barnett reportedly had been in Charleston for legal interviews linked to that case.

The 787 was launched in 2011, with one of the advertised benefits reportedly being that Boeing could manufacture the aircraft more cheaply than its previous models. The Gizmodo report adds that from the get-go, the plane was ridiculed for having an overly complicated assembly process. The report quoting an aviation commentator said that it was as if Boeing had said “F*ck it. Let’s throw out everything we’ve ever known or used in airplane production and use this new, unproven method.” Critics noted that the company had outsourced too many parts to too many different contractors and that there was a risk that all of those components might not properly fit together when the craft was finally assembled.