(ProsperNews.net) – A second airline safety whistleblower has died suddenly. Joshua Dean was 45 years old and in good health until he developed respiration problems in mid-April. Carol Parsons, a relative, described how Dean admitted himself to a Kansas hospital after developing breathing difficulties. His condition deteriorated rapidly, and he developed pneumonia and MRSA – an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection.
Having transferred to a specialist unit in Oklahoma City, doctors placed Mr. Dean on machines that provided external oxygenation for his blood and kept his heart and lungs functioning. He died from a stroke on April 30. His aunt described his death as “brutal.”
Mr. Dean died after providing a legal deposition about safety concerns at Spirit AeroSystems, a major supplier of Boeing. He claimed that Spirit leaders ignored defects in parts used to manufacture Boeing 737 MAX aircraft and filed a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in October 2022, claiming “serious and gross misconduct by senior quality management of the 737 production line.”
Spirit AeroSystems fired Mr. Dean months later, and he subsequently told NPR that he lost his job for raising safety concerns. He described a company “culture” that celebrated a decrease in defect reports, even though there was no decrease in defects, just growing numbers of staff members afraid to make reports.
Spirit vehemently denied Dean’s claims, but he repeated them as part of a lawsuit brought by Spirit shareholders against its executives after a door blew off an Alaska Airlines 737 flight immediately after departure from Portland, Oregon, in January.
Joshua Dean is the second person this year to die after testifying about safety dereliction in the airline industry. In March, John Barnett, who had worked for Boeing for 30 years, died by apparent suicide in South Carolina. His death, by gunshot, occurred just days after a legal deposition in which he said aircraft manufacturing processes were rushed and often unsafe.
A friend later said that he told her, “If I die, it wasn’t suicide.”
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