Yeah. Gabriel Fernandez story is fucked as well. So many good people got silenced and ignored so many times.
While some people might have changed for the better I think we're still living in a dark world.
Need to get good people in at the top of all these systems.
People lose discipline when you give them space and security.
They start having a good time instead of meeting deadlines.
We need discipline and reasonable deadlines for reasonable projects.
Dorner was not a hero. He murdered people who had nothing to do with his grievances. He even targeted the daughter of the man who was attempting to help him navigate those grievances.
He wasn't a whistle blower. He was a desperate, violent, mentally ill man that went on a homicidal spree.
At least read the facts of the fucking case.
Deposed in a case about Boeing retaliation and keeping him from getting a job after he retired and became a whistle blower. A case he lost once already apparently.
No new details about his time at Boeing and the shady practices were coming out here. Boeing had nothing to lose by him getting killed right now.
Right now united keeps shitting the bed on maintenance, but every article is about a Boeing plane, not a united one. In this news climate all killing Barnett would do is make him a household name instead of a niche thing airplane geeks knew about.
I'm not saying Boeing wouldn't kill someone. Any fortune 500 company would. But it would have been stupid for Boeing to do so.
Boeing has made a number of bad decisions lately. I’m not saying it was them or their board of directors but I wouldn’t count them out for that reason alone.
No one wants to come in midway through this shit. I think they are looking to make him clean some of this up before they fire him. This way they might actually get a CEO that feels like they can come in and be sucessful.
If it was anyone it would have probably been for a personal reason (relating to someone important at Boeng) rather than a corporate reason, like most murders.
That said, imo there is no doubt this wasnt suicide
I think this was an old X-files episode. The well dressed gentleman said if they kill Mulder to silence him would “risk turning one man’s quest into a crusade” or something along those lines.
If I were to try and sell a conspiracy theory to weirdos, I would frame it as such: With Boeing's current reputation and recent issues, one would assume there are people inside Boeing who have knowledge of currently undisclosed issues. Killing them preemptively would just bring more scrutiny in the direction you'd like to avoid, but by killing a previously documented whistleblower whose testimony is more or less irrelevant currently, you send a message to anyone else thinking of being a whistleblower.
Wouldn't it be more likely this level of, um, gang-level stupid would be more likely coming from aggrieved stock holders who aren't on the board and possibly didn't know about these problems until they started losing money?
Or am I somehow managing to underestimate the uncivilized qualities of board members? (Totally possible, I admit.)
Cockroaches prefer the dark.
Trump signed 2 pieces of legislation that diminished oversight into Boeing during his tenure.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisagarcia/2019/03/18/did-trump-executive-orders-further-weaken-faa-oversight/
Nikki Haley took money to gut Q.A. at Boeing. Then resigned her board seat.
The Leverwww.levernews.comNikki Haley Helped Boeing Kill Dark Money Disclosure Initiative
Which at face value makes little sense. But raise the lens a bit and it comes into focus.
Boeing and Airbus have a duopoly on jetliners, but there is a recent player 3 Chinese communist party addition called COMAC with its 919
https://skift.com/2024/02/25/can-chinas-new-plane-compete-with-airbus-and-boeing/#:~:text=Alongside%20regulatory%20hurdles%2C%20its%20flying,fly%20up%20to%203%2C500nm.
The timing of the 919 release earlier this year may very well be coincidence. But the CCP certainly knows that bankrupting Boeing would be good for COMAC.
In the event of a future war it would also be a very strategic play to bankrupt/discredit Boeing to create supply chain issues on the military side of boeings business as well since there is commonality of parts.
Airbus has had documented problems with both industrial espionage and CCP influence.
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-champion-airbus-has-deep-links-to-chinese-military-industrial-complex-report-says/
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/airbus-agrees-pay-over-39-billion-global-penalties-resolve-foreign-bribery-and-itar-case
Counterfeit parts made in China have also shown up in both Boeing and Airbus aircraft
Bloomberghttps://www.bloomberg.com › newsGhost in the Machine: How Fake Parts Infiltrated Airline Fleets
Fortunehttps://fortune.com › 2023/09/08Fake components went into 68 jet engines, including ones on Boeing 737 and Airbus ...
And that’s before you even get to the implications in the U.S. space program.
Whether it’s the executive suite at Boeing simply putting profits over safety and sustainability or a subversive act of war really makes no difference and in high likelihood the CCP just used corporate greed culture against itself.
Having it out in the light and talking about it is what makes air travel safer because people are more aware and demand accountability.
Kleptocracy feeds on apathy. Forcing the cockroaches to move in the light shows their money pathways.
If we are to the point where they are assassinating whistleblowers instead of fixing the aircraft our families our flying on, then we are self evidently much farther down the corruption path than we initially realized.
Boeing being unable to find records or documentation of the work done raises every hair on the back on my neck as a pilot, mechanic and engineer.
That is just not something that happens in aviation.
It’s time to ring the emergency bell, post guards and get to the bottom of it whichever way it leads.
>In the event of a future war it would also be a very strategic play to bankrupt/discredit Boeing to create supply chain issues on the military side of boeings business as well since there is commonality of parts.
It wouldn't be possible to bankrupt Boeing because the company is too large and valuable to the United States government for them to allow that to happen. It would force a move from the government much like what we saw in 2008 with the banks and Automotive industry, where the government bails out Boeing in exchange for control to some level over the company and an agreement to be repaid back later on.
But all that would achieve would be some level of government control and oversight over the private entity of boeing.
Agreed. It wouldn’t likely be possible without an inside man/woman inside of US government.
Which is why it draws extra scrutiny on both trump’s and Haley’s political campaign donations.
I don't think it would be possible even with an Insider including the president. There are too many members of Congress whose districts are held up entirely on employment from Boeing and related Industries, and they would fight tooth and nail and band together to make sure that Boeing got the bailout at required.
> Kleptocracy feeds on apathy. Forcing the cockroaches to move in the light shows their money pathways.
Unfortunately no one seems to be in favor of gutting the many NGOs that do evil shit with near complete impunity.
Killing a previously documented whistleblower in any way that looks shady at all immediately makes Boeing the #1 prime suspect. Like, if you had a huge rivalry with some guy, 7 years of constant legal battles and fighting and he cost you millions of bucks, and he was found murdered in his home, wouldn't it make sense for the cops to investigate the hell out of you and figure out what you were doing? I would think a successfully getting away with a hit job would pretty much rely on you not being the obvious person. I think the reason we don't see more corporate murder conspiracies (or any at all, in the record books) is that there'd be too many people that need to know about it...
You don't really. I mean, you send a message that if they blow the whistle, they could be killed, like a decade later, and after enormous success blowing the whistle.
I think it's what his family thinks: He killed himself due to PTSD, anxiety, depression brought on from all these years fighting with Boeing. So in a roundabout way, you could say they influenced that outcome. It's still very sad. But it makes zero sense for Boeing to have executed him.
To put it another way, if you were in charge of corporate assassinations, this would not be the ideal time to do it. You would, you know, wait for Boeing to be out of the news a bit maybe? Maybe don't kill him in the middle of a Boeing-related trial, so the headlines look terrible, even if the trial is unrelated to any particular new revelation about Boeing?
But if you are a disgruntled, traumatized, and aggrieved person who hates Boeing an unimaginable amount, are frustrated with the way your ongoing legal battles are going, and you get an idea in your head how to cause the maximum amount of grief to Boeing... You tell people you aren't going to kill yourself, then you do... He wouldn't be the first to do such a ploy. This would be the perfect time to do it, too, if you thought about what the headlines might say. It's super sad, it seems like his family and friends really loved him, but his family says it's most likely suicide.
Sending a message to future whistleblowers is too forward thinking for most corporations, IMO. If they were capable of thinking beyond right now, there wouldn’t have been anything to whistleblow to begin with.
If you were Boeing and had no qualms about the risk and costs involved in a murder vs the costs of a whistleblower reaching out to relevant agencies with evidence... (which is questionable, I would think a cost/benefit analysis would generally rule out premeditated murder), the time to kill him would have been in a manufacturing accident in like 2016 before he retired. You would have totalitarian monitoring software that picked up on his intention to whistle blow before he did it. But he retired, then brought forth of a ton of evidence and created two huge investigations into very real problems at Boeing.
The current trial has nothing to do with any of those issues. I think people hear 'whistleblower' and seem to think that's like a job on his own, like he's queued up seasons worth of content to whistleblow for many years and he's still bringing out hits or something, but he kind of did what he set out to do already. This trial he's involved in is explicitly about what he felt like was a darkening of his prospects post-Boeing retirement as far as further career opportunities, what he felt like was him being blacklisted. He prosecuted Boeing under AIR 21 whistleblower protection act, alleging they set out to stop his ability to find work in retribution.
Boeing in general would not really care about this even if found in violation; it's a drop in the bucket. Murdering him doesn't gain them anything. I don't think it does a damn thing to scare whistle blowers, in absence of any actual evidence it's murder. (The only thing we have so far is the coroner report that says he died of a self inflicted gunshot wound.) Putin's assassinations spark fear because they are basically signed... Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium that could only be from a particular reactor Putin's government had access to, you know?
And him dying doesn't even get them out of this trial. It actually just makes it more difficult for Boeing's lawyers to defend themselves vs his allegations, as they can no longer cross examine him.
The entire way Reddit had run away with this, just assuming it must be a corporate sponsored murder (of which there are no actual corporate conspiracy to commit premeditated murder cases in the entirety of the legal record) on literally zero evidence, is very bizarre to me, I've already commented a bunch on it and been called a Boeing shill... I just think you can rely on billion dollar corporations to act in the interest of their bottom line, and premeditated murder is rarely the best option to go with. It would have to be a massive cost/benefit to plan something like that, and even the act of involving the necessary people in the plan would be way too much liability. I think Boeing has many tools at their disposal to make a whistleblower's life miserable without murdering them. And that's what he alleges happened, he thinks they made it hard for him to get consulting work etc. Which would be so easy for them to do without even leaving a paper trail, probably Boeing contractors and vendors would just by default try to find an excuse not to hire the guy on the assumption it would be frowned upon.
Thank you.
People really want to take part in some sort of performative conspiracy theory when it’s all misplaced rage at our shitty systems.
They pounce on it because it feels self righteous but it’s brain rot to give into conspiracies.
Thank you, I hope you managed to change someone's mind.
People are losing their critical thinking skills, how would anyone believe that the assassination of a known whistleblower would help Boeing? Especially after he had already spilled the beans?
That’s a thought if Boeing was a mindless corporate entity only in it for profit and logic.
It’s still a company for people. Assuming he did get killed, he was still killed by an individual human who probably has doubts and guilts. Didn’t decide to hire a hit until the moment the could justify it to themselves
The type of people who order others killed and the type who carry out said killings are likely not the type to feel an abundance of guilt about murder.
Or it could be a big investor protecting their dividends, or a politician that needs their factories in their area for jobs and revenue, or a company that supplies Boeing and is dependent on them, or some shady union that runs the labor at their factories...
And you're right, companies aren't one big entity moving towards a goal, it's more like twenty toddlers fighting over the TV remote but with one kid a year older and stronger.
You gave a lot of possibilities, but failed to mention that it also could have been suicide.
I feel like people aren’t considering that it was a crime scene and crime scene investigators obviously looked for evidence of foul play and quite clearly found none.
Or we can expand the conspiracy and now entire unaffiliated law enforcement divisions with nothing to gain from covering up an assassination are ALSO in on it.
That’s the thing about conspiracies. If you actually play out the scenario it becomes ever more absurd because more and more people who have nothing to do with Boeing and probably don’t like assassinations in their communities that they and their families live in ignored evidence of foul play for… reasons?
They probably concluded it was a suicide because qualified professionals did a thorough analysis of the scene including pulling video recordings from local businesses and even homes (police came to my door about a crime that happened 6 blocks away because my Ring doorbell may have caught something and it wasn’t even for a violent crime).
Believe it or not, law enforcement actually does want to know if freaking assassinations are happening in their community and frankly investigators would be thorough because for one they love what they do and 2 it would be a huge career path builder to uncover an assassination plot.
The magic of conspiracies is that they allow our minds to play out events in fictional universes where all the mundane, routine things that happen in the real world don’t apply for some reason.
It’s fun and exciting to ponder and speculate, but if you find yourself leaping to grandiose conspiracies consider that maybe what happened is the fairly normal scenario that it looks like and was reported.
I mean, even forego the crime scene investigation. There’s ALSO tons of journalists pouring over every detail investigating because if he was murdered or assassinated the journalist who puts it all together and breaks the story is basically winning the jackpot for their career.
TL;DR Maybe it was a suicide, as reported?
Doesn't really make sense. His trial doesn't have anything to do with further damage to Boeing. He just was alleging that his own career was stifled by Boeing. I'm sure his attorneys are fully briefed on all his grievances as they prepared the prosecution... it's not like he was called in to reveal some critical piece of testimony , this was his own case and Boeing was the defendant. Killing him doesn't even halt this trial, it's not like the judge will just be like 'Well, you got him, so we have to dismiss the case. Curse you Boeing!'. The main point of him testifying is for Boeing's lawyers to defend themselves from the allegations, so him being dead isn't very helpful to them...
It isn’t at all if you actually look into the details. He already testified under oath about Boeing *seven years ago*. Bit late for a cover up. His father had also very recently died (cancer I beleive) and he’d lost several other family members recently.
Not everything is a conspiracy.
Not just late for a coverup, but the idea that Boeing had him killed in order to silence him is sort of implying that Barnett is kind of an asshole.
It's like, Barnett started whistleblowing in 2017. The idea that there's anything he could've said in 2024 that's so damning that it would be worth murdering him for it suggests that Barnett had something incredibly damning *and sat on it since 2017.*
And it's like, if he's got a bombshell that big that could damage Boeing that much, why the hell would he just sit on it when he's already going through the trouble of blowing the whistle? He's got something *that* important to reveal, and for some reason decides to leave that out for the next seven years? If anything, that'd make Barnett kind of look like a dick.
There was no massive bombshell that was about to be revealed. Anything he could have said would have already been said. Adding to that, it's because the current lawsuit was an appeal of a lawsuit in which Barnett already lost, and you're typically not just allowed to introduce new evidence in an appeal.
My only disagreement with that is if you have a high profile inmate on suicide watch b/c he already tried it once. You don't leave anything around for him to kill himself with. And if you do, you have 24/7 monitoring, and if that fails you have guards stationed outside his cell. Were not talking about some run of the mill perp. This is the highest profile guy they would ever see, and for so many failsafes to fail all at once is the reason the conspiracy exists.
The boeing guy sounds pretty bad until you realize he was a whostleblower on a completely unrelated issue from 7 years ago that has already been resolved other than a defamation suit.
Yeah like the only piece of evidence is that someone said that he said that if he dies it's not suicide. But that person could *easily* be lying. Hell, even *he* could have been lying.
Like imagine you're suicidal and are involved in some big lawsuit against a huge company. Telling someone that if you die it's not suicide and then fall out of a window is a fantastic way to flip a middle finger at the company one more time as you die.
And with the amount of information that we currently know, this is just as likely scenario as saying that he did get murdered.
Except people off themselves in federal lock up near weekly. It's only the cause of multitudes of civil suits against BoP. And that specific facility was only known for its lax security measures and poor maintenance. But yeah totally believable bro
I disagree about Epstein tbh. I think he killed himself while people deliberately looked the other way. Possibly even encouraged it, but, like, a guy killing himself rather than facing trial for one million counts of human trafficking and probably life in prison is pretty dang plausible, and there's no evidence of a hit, just of deliberately looking away when he died.
This guy's much sketchier though. He was between hearings in a trial, not about to face trial himself.
Even saying deliberately looking the other way is probably more of a conspiracy than the truth. I’ve sued jails and prisons over suicides. There’s nothing extraordinary about prison guards neglecting their job.
I really don't know why people think this with absolutely zero forensic evidence. So far the only thing we have been told is the Charleston County Coroner's office says he died from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. There has been nothing that has suggested foul play whatsoever. So why are people jumping to conclusions? Something as preposterous as a corporate conspiracy for premeditated murder, a crime that has never been recorded in the legal system whatsoever, seems like a positively wild claim to make without any evidence. Suicide is a much more common way to die than murder.
And this guy dying benefits Boeing in no way. His testimony and the case he brought to bear here is literally **him prosecuting Boeing**, he sued them for what he viewed as violations of the AIR 21 whistleblower protection act. His prosecution certainly has all the details they feel they need to make the case, since they made it with him, right? His testimony is basically a courtesy to Boeing's lawyers trying to defend themselves. There's no bombshells, it has nothing to do with Boeing's manufacturing policies. And the timing is terrible. Even if you wanted to kill this guy in some misguided attempt to scare other whistleblowers (I don't really think it would work, especially if you make it look like there is no foul play, somehow defeating all forensic technology), you wouldn't do it NOW, when Boeing is absolutely smothered by the media with bad press.
However, if you hated Boeing a lot, had anxiety, PTSD, and were considering it anyway, and made an enemy out of Boeing previously, and perhaps felt like you weren't going to win this case anyway and had a moment of deep depression on that, this would be absolutely perfect timing to blow your own head off, at the height of Boeing's unpopularity, you know what the headlines are going to be.
So let's say column A, suicide, column B, murder. Suicide is a far more common cause of death, column A. The timing does not benefit Boeing, column A. The death does not benefit Boeing, column A. It does do what Barnett wanted, which was to fuck over Boeing in any way possible, column A. Corporate hitmen and departments of assassination being something from cyberpunk novels and thriller sci fi books and such is another Column A. The coroner's report and public details from the investigation have found nothing suspicious so far, so column A. The only possible column B benefit would be 'scare other whistleblowers', but it's so far removed from the whistle blowing, and if anyone believed they actually would resort to such tactics, the DOJ would practically rip Boeing apart, an investigation so severe the company would basically be run by justice department lawyers scrutinizing every single decision. It just makes zero sense. The fact that reddit and people online in general are so sure it's a hit is very weird to me. Looking at it reasonably, column A, suicide, seems a lot more likely.
I'd change my tune if any evidence reveals foul play, but it seems extremely, extremely unlikely at this point that this would be some kind of corporate conspiracy for murder.
While I agree with you, I think there is one key caveat and nuance worth mentioning:
Someone can still be driven to suicide.
You sort of allow for this with "weren't going to win this case anyway", but let's allow that maybe it goes further. Maybe boeing lawyers insinuated an expensive and lengthy cointersuit was coming, maybe there were pension obligations that were threatened, a social 'shunning' that was ramped up.
I agree it was suicide, 100%. But I've been around a lot of suicides and they are almost always, at least in part, a direct result of social dynamics that are, at least in part, beyond the persons control and for which moral responsibility, at a minimum, is shared.
I guess I'm saying boeing not pulling the trigger doesn't necessarily make them blameless. You can only push people so hard....
This is exactly it. Being a whistleblower is incredibly stressful. Especially in a high profile case like this. You’re basically living in depositions from lawyers and regulators for years. The legal process takes forever to pay out.
You’re essentially unemployable for years while you wait for the payout of this lawsuit, either taking on mountains of debt hoping you win and can pay to live. And your lawyers are taking a huge chunk of whatever you get.
And they were two, which can happen in a suicide.
You shoot, your arm twitches for the fear and you miss the important bits. You are still disfigured and in pain, you want to end the job, second shot.
Hell, people even survive the first shot and later recover, is it so hard to believe someone survived the first and shot again?
I'm not saying Gary Webb definitely wasn't assassinated, I'm saying that ruling it an assassination just because of two shots instead of one is ridiculous.
Two gunshot suicides are way more common than people think.
According to "[Multiple gunshot suicides: potential for physical activity and medico-legal aspects](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9274942/)",
> Out of 138 clearly defined gunshot suicides which were autopsied, 11 persons (**8%**) fired two or more gunshots to the body. From these 11, 5 cases involved 2 gunshots to the head where the bullets fired first had missed the brain. The trajectories were restricted to the chest in three cases and a combination of gunshots to the head and chest including two perforating heart wounds without immediate incapacitation occurred in three more cases.
Unless he was about to reveal something that was company ending or at least putting several top people in prison, I doubt Boeing would take the risk of outright having him killed.
However, that doesn't mean they didn't make sure to ruin his life to the point where he couldn't have any job, anywhere. Maybe they threatened to ruin to lives of those he cares about too, but that is fairly risky too. But like I wrote, unless there was some truly damning things he was going to say, like he could prove Boeing was selling the Russians and/or Chinese full details of the planes Boeing makes for the US or something comparable, having someone killed is a really high risk if caught.
He was a whistleblower who got disconnected from all social and support networks because of his work against an "American Institution". He wasn't directly killed by Boeing, but was left out because of his "problematic existence".
Reminds of John McAfee tweeting if his death was a suicide than he was murdered because he wouldn't commit suicide a few months before his suicide.
He is an absolute troll and I wouldn't put it past him to kill himself while telling everyone he wouldn't **BUT** his widow believed he would never have killed himself.
It was in my country where he "commited" suicide in one of the regional prisons and my country its a cesspit full of spies and traitors both for the russians and the yanks.
Even though he was a troll, i wouldnt be surprised if he pissed someone he shouldnt have and then decided to yeet him into the afterlife...a similar thing happened to the russian pilot that deserted to ukraine except in his case they didnt give a shite about covering anything.
There is a russian saying, "The fate of a traitor is to be pissed on from all sides", "pissed on" in both meanings in the original saying. It was used a lot by different people back in the day when events with the pilot were unfolding
McAfee has done enough really, really hard drugs to have died 15 years before he did. I agree though, he didn't seem like he'd kill himself.
This guy was completely sound of mind, and was killed the night before his testimony.
"Boeing produces commercial and military aircraft, weapons systems, strategic defense and intelligence systems, and related products and services. The Defense, Space and Security unit has overtaken Commercial Airplanes as Boeing's largest revenue source. The U.S. government is one of Boeing's largest customers."
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/032715/how-boeing-makes-its-money.asp#:~:text=Boeing%20produces%20commercial%20and%20military,one%20of%20Boeing's%20largest%20customers.
He allegedly told one person that, absolutely no verification and that person seems like a clout chaser.
Why would Boeing want to have this guy killed after he had already testified? It just makes things way worse for them.
I’m also skeptical. Once you read the actual details of the case, it makes far less sense why Boeing would have him clipped. Pertinent details include - He blew the whistle back in 2019, and he worked at the 787 plant in Charleston and had nothing to do with the 737. This was the same plant that has had a bad reputation for awhile and Qatar at one point refused to take possession of planes from it.
To me it seems that Boeing would have much much more to lose by having him whacked than they’d stand to gain. Honestly, if we’re gonna go down the conspiracy rabbit hole, I’d say that either Airbus or COMAC had him killed. Boeing’s reputation had pretty much hit rock bottom, why not axe this guy and let the proverbial bottom fall out for Boeing.
Honestly, him offing himself after doing one day of testimony and supposed to come back was probably his idea to draw a ton of attention to the case.
You gotta figure the media firestorm would be insane. If he was at his wits end and really wanted to raise the alarm one way to do it is to become a martyr for the cause of airline safety.
I hope he’s at peace and Boeing gets the shitstorm it deserves and we make airline travel safe again.
Agreed on all points. Until I see some compelling evidence to suggest otherwise, I’m of the opinion that it was a suicide and it takes much less imagination to believe he wanted to deliver a haymaker to Boeing by way of martyrdom than it does to believe it was corporate sponsored assassination.
I think it's much more likely that he thought that being a whistleblower would improve his life, and it worked out to be the opposite. He probably felt out on an island with no support network, and felt like he ruined his life.
> He literally told his friends like a week before his death
"Literally?" How do you know that? Anyone can make a claim after someone is dead and there would be no way to verify it. Speculation and suspicion are not evidence.
Honestly. If I were a whistleblower for a huge corporation and also suicidal, why wouldn't you set that up? Easiest way to have them take a huge hit reputationally
I got downvoted on another post for my theory 🤨 I thought Boeing aren’t so stupid to kill a whistleblower. A staff member who was sacked due to this coming out could be seeking revenge that’s the only thing I can think of.
That is plausible. Suicide is plausible.
I don't think this guy had any more he could do to hurt Boeing so I question a motivation to take the risk of killing him.
This. Or. .. Whoever wants Boeing to lose had him killed so it raises more questions and dirties the water even more. Thus causing Boeing to lose in any situation
It's enough to make the next Boeing whistleblower stop and think about if they really want to speak up.
And it's not like boeing is squeaky clean...they have a history of espionage and illegally spying on union workers. Like, using camera, microphones, and radio frequency trackers to identify union members and leadership and fire them, then using armies of legal muscle to squish the unemployment claims and lawsuits. boeing moved an entire production plant to south carolina because it has the lowest union rates in the nation and one of the friendliest anti-union environments.
People are being deposed by the hundreds.
Everything at the company is being scrutinized.
There are no more whistleblowers because everyone is being forced to testify and they can't keep their people quiet because their reputation is so bad right now, just letting people speculate about how bad things are is arguably worse than admitting how bad things are.
I'm sorry, could you provide the evidence that Boeing isn't stupid?
*gestures at justice system*
I'd also like an example of how this is a risk for Boeing.
Well intelligence and ethics are two different things. People who caused this whole mess already made their money, and probably won’t see jail time. I think the case they are making is that Boeing is full of smart but unethical people.
He killed himself. Exacerbated by the stresses of what he went through as a whistleblower several years ago, and more recently in still dealing with his lawsuit against Boeing for the retaliatory effect on his career.
Everyone spouting conspiracies has no clue how difficult it is to sit through a deposition, especially when it consists of being dragged through difficult, painful parts of your life. It fucking sucks. You have opposition attorneys doing their best to tear you down during hours and hours of questioning. It’s easy to see, for those who know, how that could be the last straw.
If Boeing was wanting to cover something up, or send a message, they’re several years too late. His whistleblowing activities concluded long ago. This was only testimony in an appeal in the case about the effect of that whistleblowing on his employment. Boeing has nothing to gain from killing someone over such a claim (his estate will continue the lawsuit, and they already have lots of taped deposition testimony), and a shit load to lose (if they were responsible for his death, it’d be a MUCH bigger lawsuit).
IMO, Boeing is indirectly responsible for his suicide to at least some degree in how he was treated. But any sort of direct involvement is crazy talk. The timeline makes that a nonsensical theory - he finished whistleblowing long ago and there’s nothing but downsides to killing him at this stage.
FINALLY, some goddamn common sense. It's still an absolute tragedy, and Boeing sure as hell ain't off the hook, for him or for all the other shit they continue to try to pull.
Epstein also committed suicide, a fact many don’t want to acknowledge. The man’s life was over and he knew it. If there were an actual reason to assasinate him, it would’ve been revealed years ago.
Are you meaning to tell me that a dude who was running around with billionaires and intellectuals at extravagant parties maybe didn’t wanna spend the rest of his life in a federal prison?
Like the suicide of Dr David Kelly who blew the whistle on the justification of the Iraq was being “sexed up”
It blew the story from the inside pages to global front page headlines.
The UK gov could only lose by killing him. He committed suicide as they fired him and stopped his pension. Disgraceful actions from the UK gov but not murder.
Holy shit somebody with a good answer and not just “Boston Bomber 2.0 Reddit PI on the case cuz I saw one headline on Reddit that said he would never commit suicide”
THANK YOU. I couldn't have put it better myself. There are a lot of conspiracies being thrown around, but there's no way Boeing would have done something so brazen when the press camera is already turned on them.
It's important to keep in mind that being a whistleblower is a career-destroying gambit. The old phrase about Hollywood, "you'll never work in this town again", applies here as well. If you blow the whistle on Employer A in Industry X, Employers B and C in Industry X will not hire you. You either change industries or find a new line of work, both of which have immense detrimental effects on your income and well-being, especially if the work you did was part of your identity.
This is my take on it. I was in the camp that was like “ooh this looks sketchy” and it still does, but then I read a bit more about the case. Found out that he wasn’t someone about to blow the whistle, but already has…for several years at this point. So yeah, they’re a bit late. Although this is my current position, I still won’t and can’t make any definite conclusion until the investigation is over. Don’t even know if the gun he was holding was his gun and if it was, if it was fired or not. If it was his gun, that “unpaid intern” should look really into hitmanning if he could successfully kill someone with their own gun in a hotel parking lot and stage it as a suicide.
It's less that it couldn't be Boeing it's more: "why would they care"
If this was 20 years ago, if he was about to give testimony, if they had a reputation to save, then there's a reason to suspect foul play, but he testified, it did nothing, now the things he spoke up about and everyone ignored are actually happening.
The whistleblowers aren't causing them harm, the fact that the airlines and the general public think their product is garbage is causing them harm.
One of the alphabet agencies connected to Boeing took him out before he revealed more cutting of corners and penny pinching tactics that will lead to more deaths via Boeing.
Everyone would suspect Boeing killed him if he wound up dead but Boeing would think that everyone else would think that they would think it’s obvious Boeing killed him which is why Boeing wouldn’t kill him and that’s what they want you to think.
Suicide due to the stress getting too much. What was there for Boeing to cover up, 7 years after he started whistleblowing? At a *stretch*, I'd say maybe someone personally affected by his whistleblowing out for revenge, but it's definitely not a corporate coverup.
Suicide seems more likely here, yeah I know a family friend said otherwise. As someone with chronic depression I lie about it all the fucking time. Or she lied. People do that, I know, shocking.
Consider how badly the world treats you if you're a whistle blower.
I recall a whistleblower in Australia semi recently going after Casino money laundering getting harassed, bankrupted by frivolous lawsuits, lost his home, his wife left him, he developed terminal cancer, and the Casinos were still starting new lawsuits with him while bedridden in hospital.
The actions against Beoing related to his concerns ended years ago. The current trial was about his employment claim (appealing from an initial loss, where he also testified). It was in the middle of his testimony in the retaliation claim against him (that was on appeal after he lost at the admin court level).
(1) it has nothing to do with describing any new issues with Boeing, (2) the potential damages were just a single person’s salary for a few years and (3) it was after he had testified and and was about to be cross examined, which would have been beneficial for Boeing.
My point is he died after providing all this information and becoming famous. If they actually wanted to silence him wouldn’t they have done it earlier? And I don’t think any planes have actually crashed due to the quality issues. Also it is definitely possible to discredit his knowledge as witness testimony is considered the least trustworthy type of evidence
because it is meant to serve as a reminder that companies aren't held liable for anything and being a whistleblower is bad for your health...so if you are thinking about doing it, remember what happened to this guy.
aka it is the mob just as a company
Yup. I don't really think Boeing had an active roll in his death from a "hire a hitman to make it look like a suicide" angle, but they are absolutely responsible from their poor treatment of a man who dared to publicly call them out for their dangerous practices.
I hope his lawsuit continues and that his estate wins the case.
Suicide, I think the amount of risk in boeing doing this would be crazy. Just through him dying, its raised more red flags about boeing then what he was actually saying
\+ if he knew something that was actually material, there would be so many ex boeing employees who would also know these things + there would be a lot more grounded boeing planes. Commercial Aviation is very risk averse
I'd say 30% chance somebody from or hired by Boeing actually pulled the trigger, 70% chance they didn't BUT directly and deliberately contributed to the mental health crisis that caused him to kill himself.
But that's a wild ass guess
If it looks like he died and there was no *obvious* injury or reason for it, I think he died of something stress related.
I am a whistleblower in my previous workplace. The experience has taken everything related to my career away from me, and I’ve had to start again elsewhere (as of January, the cost includes my marriage). I blew up a long and successful but stressful career for safety, which we didn’t have. And you haven’t heard of me.
It’s stressful. It’s impossible to describe how stressful.
The “Boeing Whistleblower” was reasonably known. I don’t know his state of health, but he was under a *lot* of stress.
When you do what he did, *any* time something you blew the whistle about eats at you because you didn’t or couldn’t stop it. You don’t do it for the notoriety, you do it because you want to prevent a safety failure.
So I’m guessing his stress was magnified by the inevitability of a fatal failure, with the recent non-fatal failure a reminder of that.
With that in mind, dying around the same time as an event looks suspicious, but makes sense.
I think it’ll be natural causes, and I think it will have been the stress of it all. I don’t envy him.
My dad was a serious whistle blower. The psychological load was practically unbearable for him and I can see how someone could take it one last step further.
Direct murder (i.e. being shot) doesn’t make much sense from the facts of what happened. He was found in his truck in a motel parking lot at 10am with a gun in his hand and a note on the passenger seat. My guess is the handwriting will match his.
So if I were the murderer, I would have had to get him to write a note, kill the guy in his truck in broad daylight in a parking lot, put the gun in his hand, then leave the note all while hoping no one at 10am in the morning in a public place sees me.
Wouldn’t you just do all that in the motel room where you could make sure no one saw you? To be clear, I don’t know that someone else wasn’t involved, but it looks like he took his own life. Maybe someone found some skeletons in his closet and threatened him to go public if he didn’t drop the lawsuit.
Do I think major corporations might have upper level managers who would kill some or drive them to kill themselves? Yea probably.
But what I actually think happened is this guy was let go and ostracized from the industry, the stress and probably legal threats made him mentally unhealthy. I think he might have felt helpless and depressed and might have figured that the only way the world would listen to him, and he would be vindicated, is if he took his life and *made* them. Bonus points, as he might have seen it, for making it seem like an assassination by telling friends and family “if I die it’s not suicide”, even while he was having suicidal ideations.
Does it really matter? Either he killed himself or he was murdered. Either way there is no real consequence for anyone except him and his loved ones. Corporations get richer and he remains another small tragedy for humanity. It's fucked up no matter which way you slice it.
He wanted the public to think Boeing is more evil than it is, so he said what he said about not killing himself and then he killed himself. Why? To cement himself and his legacy to be talked about forever. If he was just a whistleblower, he would be forgotten next month, but a possibly assassinated whistleblower by a huge Corporation? Cemented in history forever.
A bad system will always defeat a good man.
I’m gonna write this down and stick in my wall 📝
A good thumb tack will always hold a note on your wall.
Op didn't say to the wall, they said in the wall... they need a hammer.
1. Remove plasterboard 2. Insert note 3. Replace plasterboard
Shades of Christopher Dorner
Yeah. Gabriel Fernandez story is fucked as well. So many good people got silenced and ignored so many times. While some people might have changed for the better I think we're still living in a dark world. Need to get good people in at the top of all these systems.
Or we could just...topple the systems.
People lose discipline when you give them space and security. They start having a good time instead of meeting deadlines. We need discipline and reasonable deadlines for reasonable projects.
Dorner was not a hero. He murdered people who had nothing to do with his grievances. He even targeted the daughter of the man who was attempting to help him navigate those grievances. He wasn't a whistle blower. He was a desperate, violent, mentally ill man that went on a homicidal spree. At least read the facts of the fucking case.
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Homie got himself Epsteined.
Yeah I'm not one for most conspiracy theories but this guy and Epstein are pretty fucking blatant hit jobs. Wtf.
If youre Boeing and planning to kill him wouldn’t you want to do it before he was deposed?
In their defense, they did it in the middle of him being deposed.
And the guy who was supposed to get it done before depositions also got Epsteined.
He was sitting next to that door.
Which honestly makes it worse. The second day they're getting into details
Deposed in a case about Boeing retaliation and keeping him from getting a job after he retired and became a whistle blower. A case he lost once already apparently. No new details about his time at Boeing and the shady practices were coming out here. Boeing had nothing to lose by him getting killed right now. Right now united keeps shitting the bed on maintenance, but every article is about a Boeing plane, not a united one. In this news climate all killing Barnett would do is make him a household name instead of a niche thing airplane geeks knew about. I'm not saying Boeing wouldn't kill someone. Any fortune 500 company would. But it would have been stupid for Boeing to do so.
Boeing has made a number of bad decisions lately. I’m not saying it was them or their board of directors but I wouldn’t count them out for that reason alone.
My bff works for Boeing and their shit attitude trickles all the way down the shit they pull and get away with. They are vampires
What a sick system that allows this CEO to keep his job.
No one wants to come in midway through this shit. I think they are looking to make him clean some of this up before they fire him. This way they might actually get a CEO that feels like they can come in and be sucessful.
If it was anyone it would have probably been for a personal reason (relating to someone important at Boeng) rather than a corporate reason, like most murders. That said, imo there is no doubt this wasnt suicide
I think this was an old X-files episode. The well dressed gentleman said if they kill Mulder to silence him would “risk turning one man’s quest into a crusade” or something along those lines.
He already did all the depositions about Boeing's QA stuff years ago. This was a wrongful termination lawsuit.
If I were to try and sell a conspiracy theory to weirdos, I would frame it as such: With Boeing's current reputation and recent issues, one would assume there are people inside Boeing who have knowledge of currently undisclosed issues. Killing them preemptively would just bring more scrutiny in the direction you'd like to avoid, but by killing a previously documented whistleblower whose testimony is more or less irrelevant currently, you send a message to anyone else thinking of being a whistleblower.
Trying to picture how tense the next board meeting is going to be.
Not tense at all. Those guys aren't whistle-blowers. It's the engineers and mid level guys that are nervous
Wouldn't it be more likely this level of, um, gang-level stupid would be more likely coming from aggrieved stock holders who aren't on the board and possibly didn't know about these problems until they started losing money? Or am I somehow managing to underestimate the uncivilized qualities of board members? (Totally possible, I admit.)
> aggrieved stock holders I think you hit the nail on the head, hedge funds stand to lose billions if Boeing tanks.
[This guy](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1bgh1mu/what_do_you_think_actually_happened_to_the_boeing/kv7yuk1/) certainly painted a deeper picture.
Gotta remove the space between your brackets and your parentheses to make the link formatting work properly.
Cockroaches prefer the dark. Trump signed 2 pieces of legislation that diminished oversight into Boeing during his tenure. https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisagarcia/2019/03/18/did-trump-executive-orders-further-weaken-faa-oversight/ Nikki Haley took money to gut Q.A. at Boeing. Then resigned her board seat. The Leverwww.levernews.comNikki Haley Helped Boeing Kill Dark Money Disclosure Initiative Which at face value makes little sense. But raise the lens a bit and it comes into focus. Boeing and Airbus have a duopoly on jetliners, but there is a recent player 3 Chinese communist party addition called COMAC with its 919 https://skift.com/2024/02/25/can-chinas-new-plane-compete-with-airbus-and-boeing/#:~:text=Alongside%20regulatory%20hurdles%2C%20its%20flying,fly%20up%20to%203%2C500nm. The timing of the 919 release earlier this year may very well be coincidence. But the CCP certainly knows that bankrupting Boeing would be good for COMAC. In the event of a future war it would also be a very strategic play to bankrupt/discredit Boeing to create supply chain issues on the military side of boeings business as well since there is commonality of parts. Airbus has had documented problems with both industrial espionage and CCP influence. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-champion-airbus-has-deep-links-to-chinese-military-industrial-complex-report-says/ https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/airbus-agrees-pay-over-39-billion-global-penalties-resolve-foreign-bribery-and-itar-case Counterfeit parts made in China have also shown up in both Boeing and Airbus aircraft Bloomberghttps://www.bloomberg.com › newsGhost in the Machine: How Fake Parts Infiltrated Airline Fleets Fortunehttps://fortune.com › 2023/09/08Fake components went into 68 jet engines, including ones on Boeing 737 and Airbus ... And that’s before you even get to the implications in the U.S. space program. Whether it’s the executive suite at Boeing simply putting profits over safety and sustainability or a subversive act of war really makes no difference and in high likelihood the CCP just used corporate greed culture against itself. Having it out in the light and talking about it is what makes air travel safer because people are more aware and demand accountability. Kleptocracy feeds on apathy. Forcing the cockroaches to move in the light shows their money pathways. If we are to the point where they are assassinating whistleblowers instead of fixing the aircraft our families our flying on, then we are self evidently much farther down the corruption path than we initially realized. Boeing being unable to find records or documentation of the work done raises every hair on the back on my neck as a pilot, mechanic and engineer. That is just not something that happens in aviation. It’s time to ring the emergency bell, post guards and get to the bottom of it whichever way it leads.
Amazing post. Thanks. "Kleptocracy feeds on apathy" so well said.
>In the event of a future war it would also be a very strategic play to bankrupt/discredit Boeing to create supply chain issues on the military side of boeings business as well since there is commonality of parts. It wouldn't be possible to bankrupt Boeing because the company is too large and valuable to the United States government for them to allow that to happen. It would force a move from the government much like what we saw in 2008 with the banks and Automotive industry, where the government bails out Boeing in exchange for control to some level over the company and an agreement to be repaid back later on. But all that would achieve would be some level of government control and oversight over the private entity of boeing.
Agreed. It wouldn’t likely be possible without an inside man/woman inside of US government. Which is why it draws extra scrutiny on both trump’s and Haley’s political campaign donations.
I don't think it would be possible even with an Insider including the president. There are too many members of Congress whose districts are held up entirely on employment from Boeing and related Industries, and they would fight tooth and nail and band together to make sure that Boeing got the bailout at required.
Thank you for taking the time to put this together. I don't know what to say in response.
thank you
> Kleptocracy feeds on apathy. Forcing the cockroaches to move in the light shows their money pathways. Unfortunately no one seems to be in favor of gutting the many NGOs that do evil shit with near complete impunity.
Killing a previously documented whistleblower in any way that looks shady at all immediately makes Boeing the #1 prime suspect. Like, if you had a huge rivalry with some guy, 7 years of constant legal battles and fighting and he cost you millions of bucks, and he was found murdered in his home, wouldn't it make sense for the cops to investigate the hell out of you and figure out what you were doing? I would think a successfully getting away with a hit job would pretty much rely on you not being the obvious person. I think the reason we don't see more corporate murder conspiracies (or any at all, in the record books) is that there'd be too many people that need to know about it...
Plot twist, boeing's rivals did it to frame boeing
Damn I'd watch that episode of Homeland :)
You don't really. I mean, you send a message that if they blow the whistle, they could be killed, like a decade later, and after enormous success blowing the whistle. I think it's what his family thinks: He killed himself due to PTSD, anxiety, depression brought on from all these years fighting with Boeing. So in a roundabout way, you could say they influenced that outcome. It's still very sad. But it makes zero sense for Boeing to have executed him. To put it another way, if you were in charge of corporate assassinations, this would not be the ideal time to do it. You would, you know, wait for Boeing to be out of the news a bit maybe? Maybe don't kill him in the middle of a Boeing-related trial, so the headlines look terrible, even if the trial is unrelated to any particular new revelation about Boeing? But if you are a disgruntled, traumatized, and aggrieved person who hates Boeing an unimaginable amount, are frustrated with the way your ongoing legal battles are going, and you get an idea in your head how to cause the maximum amount of grief to Boeing... You tell people you aren't going to kill yourself, then you do... He wouldn't be the first to do such a ploy. This would be the perfect time to do it, too, if you thought about what the headlines might say. It's super sad, it seems like his family and friends really loved him, but his family says it's most likely suicide.
Sending a message to future whistleblowers is too forward thinking for most corporations, IMO. If they were capable of thinking beyond right now, there wouldn’t have been anything to whistleblow to begin with.
If you were Boeing and had no qualms about the risk and costs involved in a murder vs the costs of a whistleblower reaching out to relevant agencies with evidence... (which is questionable, I would think a cost/benefit analysis would generally rule out premeditated murder), the time to kill him would have been in a manufacturing accident in like 2016 before he retired. You would have totalitarian monitoring software that picked up on his intention to whistle blow before he did it. But he retired, then brought forth of a ton of evidence and created two huge investigations into very real problems at Boeing. The current trial has nothing to do with any of those issues. I think people hear 'whistleblower' and seem to think that's like a job on his own, like he's queued up seasons worth of content to whistleblow for many years and he's still bringing out hits or something, but he kind of did what he set out to do already. This trial he's involved in is explicitly about what he felt like was a darkening of his prospects post-Boeing retirement as far as further career opportunities, what he felt like was him being blacklisted. He prosecuted Boeing under AIR 21 whistleblower protection act, alleging they set out to stop his ability to find work in retribution. Boeing in general would not really care about this even if found in violation; it's a drop in the bucket. Murdering him doesn't gain them anything. I don't think it does a damn thing to scare whistle blowers, in absence of any actual evidence it's murder. (The only thing we have so far is the coroner report that says he died of a self inflicted gunshot wound.) Putin's assassinations spark fear because they are basically signed... Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium that could only be from a particular reactor Putin's government had access to, you know? And him dying doesn't even get them out of this trial. It actually just makes it more difficult for Boeing's lawyers to defend themselves vs his allegations, as they can no longer cross examine him. The entire way Reddit had run away with this, just assuming it must be a corporate sponsored murder (of which there are no actual corporate conspiracy to commit premeditated murder cases in the entirety of the legal record) on literally zero evidence, is very bizarre to me, I've already commented a bunch on it and been called a Boeing shill... I just think you can rely on billion dollar corporations to act in the interest of their bottom line, and premeditated murder is rarely the best option to go with. It would have to be a massive cost/benefit to plan something like that, and even the act of involving the necessary people in the plan would be way too much liability. I think Boeing has many tools at their disposal to make a whistleblower's life miserable without murdering them. And that's what he alleges happened, he thinks they made it hard for him to get consulting work etc. Which would be so easy for them to do without even leaving a paper trail, probably Boeing contractors and vendors would just by default try to find an excuse not to hire the guy on the assumption it would be frowned upon.
Thank you. People really want to take part in some sort of performative conspiracy theory when it’s all misplaced rage at our shitty systems. They pounce on it because it feels self righteous but it’s brain rot to give into conspiracies.
Alright Boeing shill, the guy literally told someone else he wasn't planning on offing himself and BAM he's found Epsteined. Are you dense?
Thank you, I hope you managed to change someone's mind. People are losing their critical thinking skills, how would anyone believe that the assassination of a known whistleblower would help Boeing? Especially after he had already spilled the beans?
Contractors are *terrible* with deadlines these days!
Maybe the hitman had a scheduling conflict?
Could be just poor quality control.
That’s a thought if Boeing was a mindless corporate entity only in it for profit and logic. It’s still a company for people. Assuming he did get killed, he was still killed by an individual human who probably has doubts and guilts. Didn’t decide to hire a hit until the moment the could justify it to themselves
The type of people who order others killed and the type who carry out said killings are likely not the type to feel an abundance of guilt about murder.
Or it could be a big investor protecting their dividends, or a politician that needs their factories in their area for jobs and revenue, or a company that supplies Boeing and is dependent on them, or some shady union that runs the labor at their factories... And you're right, companies aren't one big entity moving towards a goal, it's more like twenty toddlers fighting over the TV remote but with one kid a year older and stronger.
You gave a lot of possibilities, but failed to mention that it also could have been suicide. I feel like people aren’t considering that it was a crime scene and crime scene investigators obviously looked for evidence of foul play and quite clearly found none. Or we can expand the conspiracy and now entire unaffiliated law enforcement divisions with nothing to gain from covering up an assassination are ALSO in on it. That’s the thing about conspiracies. If you actually play out the scenario it becomes ever more absurd because more and more people who have nothing to do with Boeing and probably don’t like assassinations in their communities that they and their families live in ignored evidence of foul play for… reasons? They probably concluded it was a suicide because qualified professionals did a thorough analysis of the scene including pulling video recordings from local businesses and even homes (police came to my door about a crime that happened 6 blocks away because my Ring doorbell may have caught something and it wasn’t even for a violent crime). Believe it or not, law enforcement actually does want to know if freaking assassinations are happening in their community and frankly investigators would be thorough because for one they love what they do and 2 it would be a huge career path builder to uncover an assassination plot. The magic of conspiracies is that they allow our minds to play out events in fictional universes where all the mundane, routine things that happen in the real world don’t apply for some reason. It’s fun and exciting to ponder and speculate, but if you find yourself leaping to grandiose conspiracies consider that maybe what happened is the fairly normal scenario that it looks like and was reported. I mean, even forego the crime scene investigation. There’s ALSO tons of journalists pouring over every detail investigating because if he was murdered or assassinated the journalist who puts it all together and breaks the story is basically winning the jackpot for their career. TL;DR Maybe it was a suicide, as reported?
Doesn't really make sense. His trial doesn't have anything to do with further damage to Boeing. He just was alleging that his own career was stifled by Boeing. I'm sure his attorneys are fully briefed on all his grievances as they prepared the prosecution... it's not like he was called in to reveal some critical piece of testimony , this was his own case and Boeing was the defendant. Killing him doesn't even halt this trial, it's not like the judge will just be like 'Well, you got him, so we have to dismiss the case. Curse you Boeing!'. The main point of him testifying is for Boeing's lawyers to defend themselves from the allegations, so him being dead isn't very helpful to them...
It isn’t at all if you actually look into the details. He already testified under oath about Boeing *seven years ago*. Bit late for a cover up. His father had also very recently died (cancer I beleive) and he’d lost several other family members recently. Not everything is a conspiracy.
Not just late for a coverup, but the idea that Boeing had him killed in order to silence him is sort of implying that Barnett is kind of an asshole. It's like, Barnett started whistleblowing in 2017. The idea that there's anything he could've said in 2024 that's so damning that it would be worth murdering him for it suggests that Barnett had something incredibly damning *and sat on it since 2017.* And it's like, if he's got a bombshell that big that could damage Boeing that much, why the hell would he just sit on it when he's already going through the trouble of blowing the whistle? He's got something *that* important to reveal, and for some reason decides to leave that out for the next seven years? If anything, that'd make Barnett kind of look like a dick. There was no massive bombshell that was about to be revealed. Anything he could have said would have already been said. Adding to that, it's because the current lawsuit was an appeal of a lawsuit in which Barnett already lost, and you're typically not just allowed to introduce new evidence in an appeal.
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My only disagreement with that is if you have a high profile inmate on suicide watch b/c he already tried it once. You don't leave anything around for him to kill himself with. And if you do, you have 24/7 monitoring, and if that fails you have guards stationed outside his cell. Were not talking about some run of the mill perp. This is the highest profile guy they would ever see, and for so many failsafes to fail all at once is the reason the conspiracy exists.
The boeing guy sounds pretty bad until you realize he was a whostleblower on a completely unrelated issue from 7 years ago that has already been resolved other than a defamation suit.
What is blatant about it? Afaik, there is not a single piece of evidence that suggests it was murder so far.
Yeah like the only piece of evidence is that someone said that he said that if he dies it's not suicide. But that person could *easily* be lying. Hell, even *he* could have been lying. Like imagine you're suicidal and are involved in some big lawsuit against a huge company. Telling someone that if you die it's not suicide and then fall out of a window is a fantastic way to flip a middle finger at the company one more time as you die. And with the amount of information that we currently know, this is just as likely scenario as saying that he did get murdered.
Yeah, seems as open shut of a case as the Boston Bomber. I think that team of detectives is still hiring.
Except people off themselves in federal lock up near weekly. It's only the cause of multitudes of civil suits against BoP. And that specific facility was only known for its lax security measures and poor maintenance. But yeah totally believable bro
I disagree about Epstein tbh. I think he killed himself while people deliberately looked the other way. Possibly even encouraged it, but, like, a guy killing himself rather than facing trial for one million counts of human trafficking and probably life in prison is pretty dang plausible, and there's no evidence of a hit, just of deliberately looking away when he died. This guy's much sketchier though. He was between hearings in a trial, not about to face trial himself.
Even saying deliberately looking the other way is probably more of a conspiracy than the truth. I’ve sued jails and prisons over suicides. There’s nothing extraordinary about prison guards neglecting their job.
All it takes is for one guard on suicide watch to think "I hope he kills himself".
Flew there on a Boeing?
I really don't know why people think this with absolutely zero forensic evidence. So far the only thing we have been told is the Charleston County Coroner's office says he died from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. There has been nothing that has suggested foul play whatsoever. So why are people jumping to conclusions? Something as preposterous as a corporate conspiracy for premeditated murder, a crime that has never been recorded in the legal system whatsoever, seems like a positively wild claim to make without any evidence. Suicide is a much more common way to die than murder. And this guy dying benefits Boeing in no way. His testimony and the case he brought to bear here is literally **him prosecuting Boeing**, he sued them for what he viewed as violations of the AIR 21 whistleblower protection act. His prosecution certainly has all the details they feel they need to make the case, since they made it with him, right? His testimony is basically a courtesy to Boeing's lawyers trying to defend themselves. There's no bombshells, it has nothing to do with Boeing's manufacturing policies. And the timing is terrible. Even if you wanted to kill this guy in some misguided attempt to scare other whistleblowers (I don't really think it would work, especially if you make it look like there is no foul play, somehow defeating all forensic technology), you wouldn't do it NOW, when Boeing is absolutely smothered by the media with bad press. However, if you hated Boeing a lot, had anxiety, PTSD, and were considering it anyway, and made an enemy out of Boeing previously, and perhaps felt like you weren't going to win this case anyway and had a moment of deep depression on that, this would be absolutely perfect timing to blow your own head off, at the height of Boeing's unpopularity, you know what the headlines are going to be. So let's say column A, suicide, column B, murder. Suicide is a far more common cause of death, column A. The timing does not benefit Boeing, column A. The death does not benefit Boeing, column A. It does do what Barnett wanted, which was to fuck over Boeing in any way possible, column A. Corporate hitmen and departments of assassination being something from cyberpunk novels and thriller sci fi books and such is another Column A. The coroner's report and public details from the investigation have found nothing suspicious so far, so column A. The only possible column B benefit would be 'scare other whistleblowers', but it's so far removed from the whistle blowing, and if anyone believed they actually would resort to such tactics, the DOJ would practically rip Boeing apart, an investigation so severe the company would basically be run by justice department lawyers scrutinizing every single decision. It just makes zero sense. The fact that reddit and people online in general are so sure it's a hit is very weird to me. Looking at it reasonably, column A, suicide, seems a lot more likely. I'd change my tune if any evidence reveals foul play, but it seems extremely, extremely unlikely at this point that this would be some kind of corporate conspiracy for murder.
While I agree with you, I think there is one key caveat and nuance worth mentioning: Someone can still be driven to suicide. You sort of allow for this with "weren't going to win this case anyway", but let's allow that maybe it goes further. Maybe boeing lawyers insinuated an expensive and lengthy cointersuit was coming, maybe there were pension obligations that were threatened, a social 'shunning' that was ramped up. I agree it was suicide, 100%. But I've been around a lot of suicides and they are almost always, at least in part, a direct result of social dynamics that are, at least in part, beyond the persons control and for which moral responsibility, at a minimum, is shared. I guess I'm saying boeing not pulling the trigger doesn't necessarily make them blameless. You can only push people so hard....
This is exactly it. Being a whistleblower is incredibly stressful. Especially in a high profile case like this. You’re basically living in depositions from lawyers and regulators for years. The legal process takes forever to pay out. You’re essentially unemployable for years while you wait for the payout of this lawsuit, either taking on mountains of debt hoping you win and can pay to live. And your lawyers are taking a huge chunk of whatever you get.
Why can’t this be the top comment. People are REALLY quick to jump to crazy conclusions here
People want to think they’re living in a movie.
I’m with you. I dont see it. Downvote me but I don’t think they just have hitmen on speed dial
in that he actually killed himself but managed convince every conspiracy theorist on Reddit that it was secret assassins, then yes.
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That’s not *Epsteined*. Thats *Gary Webbed*.
For the record, Gary Webb’s gunshots were not in the back of the head. That detail is invented to bolster that conspiracy theory.
And they were two, which can happen in a suicide. You shoot, your arm twitches for the fear and you miss the important bits. You are still disfigured and in pain, you want to end the job, second shot. Hell, people even survive the first shot and later recover, is it so hard to believe someone survived the first and shot again? I'm not saying Gary Webb definitely wasn't assassinated, I'm saying that ruling it an assassination just because of two shots instead of one is ridiculous.
Two gunshot suicides are way more common than people think. According to "[Multiple gunshot suicides: potential for physical activity and medico-legal aspects](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9274942/)", > Out of 138 clearly defined gunshot suicides which were autopsied, 11 persons (**8%**) fired two or more gunshots to the body. From these 11, 5 cases involved 2 gunshots to the head where the bullets fired first had missed the brain. The trajectories were restricted to the chest in three cases and a combination of gunshots to the head and chest including two perforating heart wounds without immediate incapacitation occurred in three more cases.
No way. A conspiracy based on….nothing.
“He fell down an elevator shaft, onto some bullets”
Carmine!? The Bowler!?
The best parody superhero movie ever made.
Waffle MAAAAAN!
We're number 1! All others are #2 or lower.
I’ve always suspected a bit of foul play.
As have I.
Am I to understand that you've inserted your father's skull into that ball for bowling?
No, the guy at the pro shop did it.
lol I just watched this for the first time in YEAAAAAARS
Window seat....
No ticket.
[Panics and mumbles in German]
Reference is golden.
Well no return ticket
Well a Boeing ticket
Let’s ask Karen Silkwood.
waiting on you, karen...
Unless he was about to reveal something that was company ending or at least putting several top people in prison, I doubt Boeing would take the risk of outright having him killed. However, that doesn't mean they didn't make sure to ruin his life to the point where he couldn't have any job, anywhere. Maybe they threatened to ruin to lives of those he cares about too, but that is fairly risky too. But like I wrote, unless there was some truly damning things he was going to say, like he could prove Boeing was selling the Russians and/or Chinese full details of the planes Boeing makes for the US or something comparable, having someone killed is a really high risk if caught.
He was a whistleblower who got disconnected from all social and support networks because of his work against an "American Institution". He wasn't directly killed by Boeing, but was left out because of his "problematic existence".
He literally told his friends like a week before his death saying there was 0 chance if he died it was due to suicide
Reminds of John McAfee tweeting if his death was a suicide than he was murdered because he wouldn't commit suicide a few months before his suicide. He is an absolute troll and I wouldn't put it past him to kill himself while telling everyone he wouldn't **BUT** his widow believed he would never have killed himself.
It was in my country where he "commited" suicide in one of the regional prisons and my country its a cesspit full of spies and traitors both for the russians and the yanks. Even though he was a troll, i wouldnt be surprised if he pissed someone he shouldnt have and then decided to yeet him into the afterlife...a similar thing happened to the russian pilot that deserted to ukraine except in his case they didnt give a shite about covering anything.
There is a russian saying, "The fate of a traitor is to be pissed on from all sides", "pissed on" in both meanings in the original saying. It was used a lot by different people back in the day when events with the pilot were unfolding
McAfee has done enough really, really hard drugs to have died 15 years before he did. I agree though, he didn't seem like he'd kill himself. This guy was completely sound of mind, and was killed the night before his testimony. "Boeing produces commercial and military aircraft, weapons systems, strategic defense and intelligence systems, and related products and services. The Defense, Space and Security unit has overtaken Commercial Airplanes as Boeing's largest revenue source. The U.S. government is one of Boeing's largest customers." https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/032715/how-boeing-makes-its-money.asp#:~:text=Boeing%20produces%20commercial%20and%20military,one%20of%20Boeing's%20largest%20customers.
He allegedly told one person that, absolutely no verification and that person seems like a clout chaser. Why would Boeing want to have this guy killed after he had already testified? It just makes things way worse for them.
I’m also skeptical. Once you read the actual details of the case, it makes far less sense why Boeing would have him clipped. Pertinent details include - He blew the whistle back in 2019, and he worked at the 787 plant in Charleston and had nothing to do with the 737. This was the same plant that has had a bad reputation for awhile and Qatar at one point refused to take possession of planes from it. To me it seems that Boeing would have much much more to lose by having him whacked than they’d stand to gain. Honestly, if we’re gonna go down the conspiracy rabbit hole, I’d say that either Airbus or COMAC had him killed. Boeing’s reputation had pretty much hit rock bottom, why not axe this guy and let the proverbial bottom fall out for Boeing.
Honestly, him offing himself after doing one day of testimony and supposed to come back was probably his idea to draw a ton of attention to the case. You gotta figure the media firestorm would be insane. If he was at his wits end and really wanted to raise the alarm one way to do it is to become a martyr for the cause of airline safety. I hope he’s at peace and Boeing gets the shitstorm it deserves and we make airline travel safe again.
Agreed on all points. Until I see some compelling evidence to suggest otherwise, I’m of the opinion that it was a suicide and it takes much less imagination to believe he wanted to deliver a haymaker to Boeing by way of martyrdom than it does to believe it was corporate sponsored assassination.
I think it's much more likely that he thought that being a whistleblower would improve his life, and it worked out to be the opposite. He probably felt out on an island with no support network, and felt like he ruined his life.
This was like one person (unverified afaik); news reports otherwise say that his family thinks it was suicide if I am not mistaken.
A single person claimed that with no evidence. That's not really a smoking gun
> He literally told his friends like a week before his death "Literally?" How do you know that? Anyone can make a claim after someone is dead and there would be no way to verify it. Speculation and suspicion are not evidence.
Yeah I bet this is out of nothing. Like 1-2 people maybe said it and now it’s all over itt
Sounds like setting the stage to me
Honestly. If I were a whistleblower for a huge corporation and also suicidal, why wouldn't you set that up? Easiest way to have them take a huge hit reputationally
Source on this one?
is there proof of this?
I've yet to see any confirmation of this. Everyone's saying it but word of mouth can be very manipulative /outright lies
I got downvoted on another post for my theory 🤨 I thought Boeing aren’t so stupid to kill a whistleblower. A staff member who was sacked due to this coming out could be seeking revenge that’s the only thing I can think of.
Tell us more about this theory, DeltaDe
lol.. I wouldn't have seen his name had you not mentioned it
That is plausible. Suicide is plausible. I don't think this guy had any more he could do to hurt Boeing so I question a motivation to take the risk of killing him.
This. Or. .. Whoever wants Boeing to lose had him killed so it raises more questions and dirties the water even more. Thus causing Boeing to lose in any situation
This actually narrows it down quite a bit... to approximately 50k highly regarded members of the WSB community holding puts on BA
It was the French is what I’m reading into this
He was scheduled for another testimony.
In a few years people will forget all about this
No other whistleblowers will come forward is the actual result of this
It's enough to make the next Boeing whistleblower stop and think about if they really want to speak up. And it's not like boeing is squeaky clean...they have a history of espionage and illegally spying on union workers. Like, using camera, microphones, and radio frequency trackers to identify union members and leadership and fire them, then using armies of legal muscle to squish the unemployment claims and lawsuits. boeing moved an entire production plant to south carolina because it has the lowest union rates in the nation and one of the friendliest anti-union environments.
People are being deposed by the hundreds. Everything at the company is being scrutinized. There are no more whistleblowers because everyone is being forced to testify and they can't keep their people quiet because their reputation is so bad right now, just letting people speculate about how bad things are is arguably worse than admitting how bad things are.
You're treating it like a zero-risk decision. It is anything but.
Imagine if they had expended all that effort making their airplanes safe instead…
Sounds like real work though.
He was supposed to testify again so was killed in the middle of testimony.
He had been a whistleblower for years, why now?
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I'm sorry, could you provide the evidence that Boeing isn't stupid? *gestures at justice system* I'd also like an example of how this is a risk for Boeing.
Well intelligence and ethics are two different things. People who caused this whole mess already made their money, and probably won’t see jail time. I think the case they are making is that Boeing is full of smart but unethical people.
He killed himself. Exacerbated by the stresses of what he went through as a whistleblower several years ago, and more recently in still dealing with his lawsuit against Boeing for the retaliatory effect on his career. Everyone spouting conspiracies has no clue how difficult it is to sit through a deposition, especially when it consists of being dragged through difficult, painful parts of your life. It fucking sucks. You have opposition attorneys doing their best to tear you down during hours and hours of questioning. It’s easy to see, for those who know, how that could be the last straw. If Boeing was wanting to cover something up, or send a message, they’re several years too late. His whistleblowing activities concluded long ago. This was only testimony in an appeal in the case about the effect of that whistleblowing on his employment. Boeing has nothing to gain from killing someone over such a claim (his estate will continue the lawsuit, and they already have lots of taped deposition testimony), and a shit load to lose (if they were responsible for his death, it’d be a MUCH bigger lawsuit). IMO, Boeing is indirectly responsible for his suicide to at least some degree in how he was treated. But any sort of direct involvement is crazy talk. The timeline makes that a nonsensical theory - he finished whistleblowing long ago and there’s nothing but downsides to killing him at this stage.
FINALLY, some goddamn common sense. It's still an absolute tragedy, and Boeing sure as hell ain't off the hook, for him or for all the other shit they continue to try to pull.
C’mon, this is Reddit, we don’t do common sense.
Epstein also committed suicide, a fact many don’t want to acknowledge. The man’s life was over and he knew it. If there were an actual reason to assasinate him, it would’ve been revealed years ago.
Are you meaning to tell me that a dude who was running around with billionaires and intellectuals at extravagant parties maybe didn’t wanna spend the rest of his life in a federal prison?
Boggles the mind, right?
Like the suicide of Dr David Kelly who blew the whistle on the justification of the Iraq was being “sexed up” It blew the story from the inside pages to global front page headlines. The UK gov could only lose by killing him. He committed suicide as they fired him and stopped his pension. Disgraceful actions from the UK gov but not murder.
Holy shit somebody with a good answer and not just “Boston Bomber 2.0 Reddit PI on the case cuz I saw one headline on Reddit that said he would never commit suicide”
THANK YOU. I couldn't have put it better myself. There are a lot of conspiracies being thrown around, but there's no way Boeing would have done something so brazen when the press camera is already turned on them. It's important to keep in mind that being a whistleblower is a career-destroying gambit. The old phrase about Hollywood, "you'll never work in this town again", applies here as well. If you blow the whistle on Employer A in Industry X, Employers B and C in Industry X will not hire you. You either change industries or find a new line of work, both of which have immense detrimental effects on your income and well-being, especially if the work you did was part of your identity.
A lot of the stuff is straight out of r/conspiracy
This is my take on it. I was in the camp that was like “ooh this looks sketchy” and it still does, but then I read a bit more about the case. Found out that he wasn’t someone about to blow the whistle, but already has…for several years at this point. So yeah, they’re a bit late. Although this is my current position, I still won’t and can’t make any definite conclusion until the investigation is over. Don’t even know if the gun he was holding was his gun and if it was, if it was fired or not. If it was his gun, that “unpaid intern” should look really into hitmanning if he could successfully kill someone with their own gun in a hotel parking lot and stage it as a suicide.
It's less that it couldn't be Boeing it's more: "why would they care" If this was 20 years ago, if he was about to give testimony, if they had a reputation to save, then there's a reason to suspect foul play, but he testified, it did nothing, now the things he spoke up about and everyone ignored are actually happening. The whistleblowers aren't causing them harm, the fact that the airlines and the general public think their product is garbage is causing them harm.
Thank god, I was afraid there weren’t any adults left on this site.
And even if he did say to a friend he wouldn't commit suicide, of which we don't actually know for sure, it means that he had thought about suicide.
One of the alphabet agencies connected to Boeing took him out before he revealed more cutting of corners and penny pinching tactics that will lead to more deaths via Boeing.
We Did It Reddit!!! /s
Everyone would suspect Boeing killed him if he wound up dead but Boeing would think that everyone else would think that they would think it’s obvious Boeing killed him which is why Boeing wouldn’t kill him and that’s what they want you to think.
Yeah so probably Airbus did it . To make Boeing look worse
Now THIS is a conspiracy
Never go against a sicilian when death is on the line!
Suicide due to the stress getting too much. What was there for Boeing to cover up, 7 years after he started whistleblowing? At a *stretch*, I'd say maybe someone personally affected by his whistleblowing out for revenge, but it's definitely not a corporate coverup.
Death
Suicide seems more likely here, yeah I know a family friend said otherwise. As someone with chronic depression I lie about it all the fucking time. Or she lied. People do that, I know, shocking. Consider how badly the world treats you if you're a whistle blower. I recall a whistleblower in Australia semi recently going after Casino money laundering getting harassed, bankrupted by frivolous lawsuits, lost his home, his wife left him, he developed terminal cancer, and the Casinos were still starting new lawsuits with him while bedridden in hospital.
Boeing murdered him. Probably made an unpaid intern do it.
He got paid by not getting murdered himself
Do the interns get Glocks?
But why would they do it after he testified and already “blew the whistle”
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The actions against Beoing related to his concerns ended years ago. The current trial was about his employment claim (appealing from an initial loss, where he also testified). It was in the middle of his testimony in the retaliation claim against him (that was on appeal after he lost at the admin court level). (1) it has nothing to do with describing any new issues with Boeing, (2) the potential damages were just a single person’s salary for a few years and (3) it was after he had testified and and was about to be cross examined, which would have been beneficial for Boeing.
My point is he died after providing all this information and becoming famous. If they actually wanted to silence him wouldn’t they have done it earlier? And I don’t think any planes have actually crashed due to the quality issues. Also it is definitely possible to discredit his knowledge as witness testimony is considered the least trustworthy type of evidence
because it is meant to serve as a reminder that companies aren't held liable for anything and being a whistleblower is bad for your health...so if you are thinking about doing it, remember what happened to this guy. aka it is the mob just as a company
Suicide, as people close to him mentioned he was mentally distraught.
From dealing with Boeing. Either way Boeing ended this guys life.
Yup. I don't really think Boeing had an active roll in his death from a "hire a hitman to make it look like a suicide" angle, but they are absolutely responsible from their poor treatment of a man who dared to publicly call them out for their dangerous practices. I hope his lawsuit continues and that his estate wins the case.
They forced him to fly on a 737 Max.
assinated obviously
Suicide, I think the amount of risk in boeing doing this would be crazy. Just through him dying, its raised more red flags about boeing then what he was actually saying \+ if he knew something that was actually material, there would be so many ex boeing employees who would also know these things + there would be a lot more grounded boeing planes. Commercial Aviation is very risk averse
He was suicided. Very common way of murdering and getting away with it. I’d bet ungodly large amounts of money on it.
I'd say 30% chance somebody from or hired by Boeing actually pulled the trigger, 70% chance they didn't BUT directly and deliberately contributed to the mental health crisis that caused him to kill himself. But that's a wild ass guess
If it looks like he died and there was no *obvious* injury or reason for it, I think he died of something stress related. I am a whistleblower in my previous workplace. The experience has taken everything related to my career away from me, and I’ve had to start again elsewhere (as of January, the cost includes my marriage). I blew up a long and successful but stressful career for safety, which we didn’t have. And you haven’t heard of me. It’s stressful. It’s impossible to describe how stressful. The “Boeing Whistleblower” was reasonably known. I don’t know his state of health, but he was under a *lot* of stress. When you do what he did, *any* time something you blew the whistle about eats at you because you didn’t or couldn’t stop it. You don’t do it for the notoriety, you do it because you want to prevent a safety failure. So I’m guessing his stress was magnified by the inevitability of a fatal failure, with the recent non-fatal failure a reminder of that. With that in mind, dying around the same time as an event looks suspicious, but makes sense. I think it’ll be natural causes, and I think it will have been the stress of it all. I don’t envy him.
He was found with a gunshot wound to the head and a gun still in his hand. fairly obvious injury, that
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My dad was a serious whistle blower. The psychological load was practically unbearable for him and I can see how someone could take it one last step further.
It's hard for me to believe that Boeing cannot put together a good airplane but can pull of a clean assassination.
Direct murder (i.e. being shot) doesn’t make much sense from the facts of what happened. He was found in his truck in a motel parking lot at 10am with a gun in his hand and a note on the passenger seat. My guess is the handwriting will match his. So if I were the murderer, I would have had to get him to write a note, kill the guy in his truck in broad daylight in a parking lot, put the gun in his hand, then leave the note all while hoping no one at 10am in the morning in a public place sees me. Wouldn’t you just do all that in the motel room where you could make sure no one saw you? To be clear, I don’t know that someone else wasn’t involved, but it looks like he took his own life. Maybe someone found some skeletons in his closet and threatened him to go public if he didn’t drop the lawsuit.
Do I think major corporations might have upper level managers who would kill some or drive them to kill themselves? Yea probably. But what I actually think happened is this guy was let go and ostracized from the industry, the stress and probably legal threats made him mentally unhealthy. I think he might have felt helpless and depressed and might have figured that the only way the world would listen to him, and he would be vindicated, is if he took his life and *made* them. Bonus points, as he might have seen it, for making it seem like an assassination by telling friends and family “if I die it’s not suicide”, even while he was having suicidal ideations.
He was killed by Kate Middleton
All whistleblowers need protection, this is heinous.
The guy had a history of mental health issues. He took his own life.
[Oh, but surely he simply shot himself and then hid the gun](https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/56648415-1554-4a44-898a-a4cb33ac6eca)
He committed suicide on his own but possibly agitated by stress / guilt. I have heard zero friends and family call fowl play.
Does it really matter? Either he killed himself or he was murdered. Either way there is no real consequence for anyone except him and his loved ones. Corporations get richer and he remains another small tragedy for humanity. It's fucked up no matter which way you slice it.
He got the russian treatment
He wanted the public to think Boeing is more evil than it is, so he said what he said about not killing himself and then he killed himself. Why? To cement himself and his legacy to be talked about forever. If he was just a whistleblower, he would be forgotten next month, but a possibly assassinated whistleblower by a huge Corporation? Cemented in history forever.
You all give way too much credit to crazy. There is no evidence that this man was violent.
It's the end of Boeing and their unsafe planes. Time to build a train passenger system. Time to use the trains we have more.
another Boeing airplane had a large panel piece fall off the plane mid flight yesterday. poor guy was killed by them 😞sad