2 More Boeing Whistleblowers Go Public

Two more former Boeing employees have come forward to reveal alleged plane safety issues and dangerous practices, despite the recent deaths of two previous whistleblowers who took similar actions.

Roy Irvin, a veteran of Boeing, and Santiago Paredes, who worked at Spirit AeroSystems -- an aerospace company that served as the key Boeing supplier for its 737 aircrafts -- spoke exclusively to the New York Post in an article published on Wednesday (June 5) and are two of at least 20 whistleblowers planning to publicly express concerns.

Irvin worked as a quality investigator at Boeing in North Charleston, South Carolina, to ensure that its $250 million 787 Dreamliner planes were ready to be used once they were released from the factory from 2011 to 2017, having initially began with the company in 2009. The former employee claims he "pushed back" nearly every day over safety and quality concerns upon learning that the planes had left the factory floor and were on the "flight line," supposedly checked and found to be approved for flight, but weren't, and he was often forced to be "insubordinate" over the common issues he observed.

“Missing safety devices on hardware or untightened hardware means that you’re not going to be able to control the airplane if those fail,” Irvin told the New York Post. “The safety device is on there. If the fastener is not secured correctly, it’s going to fall off and you’re not gonna be able to control the airplane.”

Irvin worked with whistleblower John Barnett, 62, who was found dead in March in a South Carolina hotel parking lot with a silver pistol in his hand shortly after coming forward with his claims and failing to show up for the second part of his testimony in his lawsuit against Boeing, which police ruled to be caused by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Joshua Dean, 45, a former quality auditor at Spirit AeroSystems who had also gone public with claims against the company, died in early May from what was described as a fast-growing infection. The two deaths have raised public concerns and apparently empowered others to come forward.

“I was at the end of the production line and so I was supposed to be looking at the finished product before they shipped it to Boeing.” said Paredes, who worked as a production inspector for Spirit AeroSystems for 12 years prior to his departure in 2022. “Instead I saw missing parts, incomplete parts, frames that had temporary clamps and missing fasteners, dents in the parts, damaged parts, cut rivets, issues that might occur but should be fixed before they got to me.

“Everything I was seeing was like a ticking time bomb.”

Boeing aircrafts have been reported to have experienced several serious incidents after the door plug panel blew off of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max mid-flight on January 5, which has led to Senate hearings over safety culture and manufacturing quality. Earlier this month, videos shared online showed passengers fleeing a burning Transair 737 plane after it skidded off the runway in Senegal.