Joshua Dean, who died Tuesday, publicly expressed his concerns about defects and quality control issues at Spirit AeroSystems, a major parts supplier to Boeing. Here, a 737 fuselage shipped to the Boeing plant in Renton, Washington, in January bears the Spirit AeroSystems logo.
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Joshua Dean, who died Tuesday, publicly expressed his concerns about defects and quality control issues at Spirit AeroSystems, a major parts supplier to Boeing. Here, a 737 fuselage shipped to the Boeing plant in Renton, Washington, in January bears the Spirit AeroSystems logo.
Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images
Joshua Dean, a former quality auditor for a major Boeing supplier who raised concerns about improperly drilled holes in the fuselage of 737 Max jets, has died.
Dean, 45, died Tuesday morning, his family announced on social media. Dean quickly fell into critical condition after being diagnosed with a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacterial infection, his family told NPR on Thursday.
He was reportedly airlifted from a hospital in Wichita, Kansas, to another hospital in Oklahoma City, but medical teams were unable to save his life seattle timesthe first to report his death.
Dean’s aunt, Carol Dean Parsons, said on Facebook: “He passed away yesterday morning and his loss will be deeply felt. We will always love you, Josh.”
Dean raises quality issues in 737 Max manufacturing process
Dean was one of the first to identify potentially dangerous flaws in the 737 Max jets at Spirit AeroSystems, a major supplier to Boeing that was spun off from the plane maker in 2005.
Now, federal investigators are looking more closely at Spirit and Boeing to understand what went wrong with a door panel that blew off an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 in mid-air in January, in a long-standing dispute between the two companies. And the latest chapter in a troubled relationship.
Spirit 發言人喬·布奇諾(Joe Buccino) 在一份聲明中表示：「我們與喬什·迪恩的家人同在。這一突然去世對於這裡和他的親人來說都是令人震驚的message.
Dean is the second Boeing-related whistleblower to die in the past three months. In March, 62-year-old John Barnett died in Charleston, South Carolina, from what the local coroner said “appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.” At the time, Barnett was testifying in a retaliation lawsuit against Boeing. Charleston police said they are still investigating his death.
Dean and Barnett are both represented by attorney Brian Knowles.
“Josh’s passing is a loss to the aviation community and the flying public,” Knowles said in a statement. “He had tremendous courage to stand up for what he believed to be true and right and to raise issues of quality and safety. Airlines should Encourage and inspire those who do raise these concerns.”
Dean quickly went from healthy to hospitalized
Dean’s mother and stepfather described him as a hard-working, honest man, a “health junkie” who rarely drank and attended church regularly. They say his prodigious memory and attention to detail have helped him in his career.
“He was just awesome,” said Wayne Weir, Dean’s stepfather. “He could read something, and then he could tell you verbatim what he read” a few days later.
Dean’s mother, Virginia Green, told NPR that Dean started feeling ill about two weeks ago. He stayed home for a few days, not going to work, but things got worse.
“Sunday [April 21] “That’s when I got a call from him saying he was very sick and having trouble breathing,” Green said. “He said he went to the hospital right away and they told him he had strep throat.”
Green went to her son’s home to check on him and told him to call her if he felt worse.
“He did call me a few hours later and told me he was in the emergency room,” she said. “He was scared. They found something in his lungs.”
“He tested positive for influenza B, he tested positive for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. He had pneumonia, his lungs were completely full. From that point on, it was downhill.”
Dean was initially treated at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Wichita. But as his condition worsened, he was taken to Integris Hospital in Oklahoma City.
It’s a shocking turn of events for Dean and his family. Green said he is extremely healthy — going to the gym regularly, running nearly every day and paying careful attention to his diet.
“This is his first time in hospital,” she said. “He didn’t even have a doctor because he was never sick.”
But within days, Dean’s kidneys failed, and he relied on an ECMO life-support machine to do the work of his heart and lungs. The night before Dean died, Oklahoma medical staff performed a bronchoscopy on his lungs, Green said.
“The doctor said he had never seen anything like this before. His lungs were completely… stuck together, like there was a net covering them.”
Green said she has requested an autopsy to determine what killed her son. Results could take several months, she said.
“We’re not sure what he died of,” she said. “We know he had a bunch of viruses. But you know, we don’t know if someone did something to him or if he was just very sick.”
Dean claims quality control system is defective
Dean followed his father and grandfather into the commercial aviation industry, holding a series of jobs at the same Wichita factory where they had previously worked.
After graduating with an engineering degree, Dean landed his first job at Spirit in 2019.
Dean took the job seriously and became increasingly frustrated with what he called Spirit’s “culture of improperly counting defects.”
In two interviews in January, Dean said Spirit pressured employees not to report defects in order to get planes out of the factory faster.
“Now, I’m not saying they don’t want you to go out there and check the work. You know, they do,” Dean told NPR. “But if you cause too much trouble, you’re going to get the Josh treatment. You’re going to get what happened to me.”
Dean was fired last April in what he said was retaliation for improperly drilled markings on the fuselage.
“I think they sent a message to other people,” Dean said. “If you’re too loud, we’ll silence you.”
Testified in shareholder lawsuit against Spirit
Dean described what he saw while working at Spirit in a deposition in a lawsuit filed by the company’s shareholders, who accuse the company of trying to mislead investors by concealing “excessive” defects at the Kansas plant. He is not a plaintiff in the case.
In the shareholder lawsuit, Dean said he pointed out a major flaw, an erroneously drilled hole in the pressure bulkhead at the rear of the 737 Max’s fuselage, months before he was fired. His testimony listed a series of key dates:
October 2022: While working as an auditor, Dean realized that Spirit staff had mistakenly drilled holes in the 737 Max rear pressure bulkhead, posing a potential threat to maintaining cabin pressure during flight. The lawsuit accuses the company of concealing problems.
April 13, 2023: Boeing has publicly disclosed a separate flaw it discovered related to a tail assembly on some 737 Max planes. Then the spirit confirmed the flaw.
April 26, 2023: Spirit fired Dean, saying he failed to point out the tail fin problem. Dean said in his testimony that he told company officials that he may have missed the skeg defect because he had just discovered the problem with the bulkhead he was inspecting and was focused on that.
August 23, 2023: Boeing announced that it has discovered fastener holes that do not meet its specifications in the rear pressure bulkhead of some 737 Max aircraft, causing “snowmen” to form due to the elongated shape of multiple holes. This is an issue Dean pointed out 10 months ago. That same day, Spirit released a statement acknowledging the issue.
The shareholder lawsuit accuses Spirit of concealing bulkhead defects “not only from investors, but apparently also from Boeing.”
A spokesman for Spirit said the company strongly objects to the lawsuit’s allegations and is fighting the case in court.
Boeing and Spirit look for ways to improve quality
Boeing is currently in talks to acquire Spirit as the planemaker’s leaders admit they may have outsourced too many parts of the manufacturing chain.
“Is it too much? Yes, it’s probably too much,” Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun told CNBC earlier this year. “I have to deal with it right here and now. .
Boeing agreed last month to pay Spirit $425 million upfront to improve its manufacturing quality.
In an interview with NPR, Joshua Dean predicted it would be difficult to replace the experienced workforce Spirit lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The mechanics are not as experienced, the inspectors are not as experienced,” Dean said. “We just lost it.”
But even after publicly voicing his concerns about Spirit’s quality control, Dean said there was reason to be optimistic about the future. He said Chief Executive Patrick Shanahan, who takes over at the end of 2023, has a unique opportunity to change Spirit’s culture for the better.
“What you really want is, you want someone to play the hero,” Dean said, adding that Shanahan had the opportunity to play “the new sheriff in town.”
“We need to make sure there’s no retaliation or intimidation,” Dean said. “This culture is too loud and you are moved or silenced – this has to go.”
