John Barnett had worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement in 2017.

In the days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company.

Boeing said it was saddened to hear of Mr Barnett’s passing. The Charleston County coroner confirmed his death to the BBC on Monday.

It said the 62-year-old had died from a “self-inflicted” wound on 9 March and police were investigating.

  • nifty
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    1059 months ago

    How about customers just flat out refuse to fly on Boeing planes?

    • SeaJ
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      729 months ago

      The fact that several airlines let you filter out plane models indicates people are indeed doing that. Airbus: no fuss; no muss.

    • RBG
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      289 months ago

      At what part of the trip. When boarding? You think the airline will accommodate? You already paid.

        • RBG
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          9 months ago

          That assumes there will always be a good alternative to choose from.

          From where I live to go back home to my parents there is exactly one provider that flies directly. All other connections have stop-overs. Not even talking about price difference.

          • nifty
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            29 months ago

            I get wanting to save your time, but if you die there’s no time left to save

      • @[email protected]
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        239 months ago

        I am actually at the point where I will avoid Boeing 737-MAX at booking, ask again at check-in to confirm the plane type, and if I saw one at the gate, I would refuse to board and accept the money as a loss. Unfortunately not everyone can afford re-booking like that. So f*ck Boeing and I just hope that Airbus won’t ever be that corrupt (chances are they are or will be at some point).

          • @[email protected]
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            49 months ago

            I mean… It takes a bit to learn how to fly a plane. They wouldn’t really want to dispose of that skill and learn to fly Airbus instead.

            • @[email protected]
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              49 months ago

              I’m no pilot, but I can’t imagine these particular variants have been around so long for retraining to be a serious issue. Not when mass death is on the line and older, reliable Boeing planes still exist.

              • @[email protected]
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                38 months ago

                I am not sure what you are trying to say exactly, however the re-certification that should be required for the 737-MAX was exactly the reason for introducing the MCAS software to prevent the crew certified for older 737 models from pushing the nose into the ground on take-off. That, together with glossing over the major design change so that no pilot would flag “hey, this is a new plane, we should get a proper new certification for this” contributed to the two crashes, murdering 350something people over profit.

                Boeing wanted to sell a new plane model with significantly altered aerodynamic behavior as a “variant” of an existing one so airlines could save cost on not having to re-certify pilots.

                • @[email protected]
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                  18 months ago

                  I’m saying if the newer, problematic planes aren’t going to be forced to ground by regulators, pilots should refuse to fly them. Surely there are plenty of planes still flying built by Boeing before they sold souls. Surely those won’t require massive retraining. Fly them instead.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    18 months ago

                    If I learned anything in my time on this planet is that there are far too few people in the world willing to stand up for their principles :(

          • @[email protected]
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            38 months ago

            Because most older Boeing models are actually robust aircraft & when the maintenance is in the hand of a capable airline, there’s nothing wrong with them from the perspective of safety. But as Boeing continues to fuck this up, and murder whistleblowers - I doubt there will be Boeing airplanes left to safely board in the future.

      • @[email protected]
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        219 months ago

        The airline will accommodate just fine: “Oh, you don’t want to fly? Too bad, the exit is that way.”

    • @[email protected]
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      28 months ago

      Because its kind of possible to organize such mass boycotts without groups set up to manage it, and none are coming forward on this.

      I mean hell, even the republicunt boycott of beer couldn’t be arsed to actually make a difference, and MAN the mixture of beer and queerness is the exact trigger to rile those bigots.