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THE crash of Air India’s 787-8 Boeing Dreamliner on Thursday will go down as one of the deadliest disasters in the history of aviation, and certainly the second deadliest disaster in Indian history after the 1996 Charki Dadri mid-air collision that claimed 349 lives. While the human cost is still being counted, we know that, at the time of writing, at least 290 lives had been lost.
For us in Pakistan, this tragedy brings up bitter memories of the May 2020 crash of PIA flight 8303 which, like the Dreamliner crash in Ahmedabad, impacted on a populated area.
In both cases, we also saw miraculous survival stories. In Pakistan, Zafar Masud and Mohammad Zubair survived the crash, and in Ahmedabad, Ramesh Viswashkumar managed to open the emergency door in time and jump out of the plane. Amazingly, he survived with relatively minor injuries, but his brother was not so lucky.
Flight crash investigations are lengthy and time-consuming, and while questions will be asked about Air India’s maintenance capabilities and the possibility of pilot error, there is increasing focus on Boeing, the aviation giant that produces the 787 Dreamliner, and which saw its share price plummet after the crash.
In the past few years, Boeing has been the target of bad press; at least three whistleblowers have come forward to warn the world of the sorry state of affairs prevailing in the world’s largest aerospace company.
Josh Barnett, who was a quality manager at Boeing, repeatedly pointed out flaws and safety lapses in the Dreamliner project. Working at Boeing’s North Carolina plant between 2010 and 2017, Barnett claims he warned the Boeing management that safety checks were being ignored under the pressure of meeting deadlines and quotas, which led to a dangerous culture of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ when it came to reporting potential issues. There was, in fact, pressure from the management to ignore such issues. While flagging numerous intentional and unintentional lapses, Barnett said that there were many cases where exposed metal shavings and parts were left dangerously close to critical wires, raising the possibility of an in-flight disaster.
There is increasing focus on Boeing after the Air India crash.
No one listened to him at Boeing, and Barnett filed complaints with America’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The latter complaint was dismissed, with OSHA ruling in favour of Boeing, a decision that some feel is a reflection of the enormous power the multibillion-dollar company wields. Barnett paid a price for speaking up, as he alleged that the Boeing management started targeting him by denying promotions and creating a hostile work environment. Retiring from Boeing, he took part in the explosive Netflix documentary Downfall: The Case Against Boeing,which delved into the lax safety culture after several disasters involving the Boeing 737 MAX. Barnett was later found dead of a ‘self-inflicted’ gunshot wound in 2024, and his family filed a wrongful death suit against Boeing, alleging that their “harassment, abuse and humiliation” of Barnett caused him to take his own life.
There were other whistleblowers too, like Joshua Dean and Sam Salehpour. Dean, a former quality auditor, warned of manufacturing defects in the 737 MAX. He, too, claimed that his complaints were ignored by the management. He was fired in 2023 and died after a ‘brief illness’ just months after Barnett.
Salehpour worked at Boeing for a decade and, like Barnett, he grew frustrated at Boeing’s unresponsiveness to his complaints and sent his allegations to the FAA. He alleged that Boeing took dangerous shortcuts in the construction of the 787 Dreamliner, which resulted in the improper fastening of different parts of the fuselage and also of the plane’s wings where they attach to the fuselage. This, claims Salehpour, could result in the plane ‘falling apart’ after a few thousand flights. These complaints led to an FAA investigation against Boeing, which found up to 97 incidents of non-compliance and “issues in Boeing’s manufacturing process control, parts handling and storage, and product control”. Like Barnett and Dean, Salehpour said he was threatened and berated by Boeing management and put through ‘hell’ for speaking up.
Last year, Al Jazeera released hidden camera footage of Boeing’s assembly plant in South Carolina, which was recorded by a Boeing employee who leaked it to the media. In this footage, the worker can be seen talking to 15 of his colleagues who were assembling the Dreamliner. He asked them if they would ever fly in the plane they were building. Ten of them said they would never take such a risk. But Boeing continues to sail past such problems, most likely due to its size, prestige and importance to the American economy, regardless of the potential danger posed to thousands of travellers.
The writer is a journalist.
Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2025
