I Think I'm Done Flying Boeing

With 346 people already dead, what's one more life?

Hi,

Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.

Gary

And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my email inbox. I have so many I can’t write back to all of you, but please know I am reading your stories. There’s a lot of shared catharsis going on.

Wormy Encounters

Now I know the words “I think I’m done flying Boeing” are dripping in the privilege of someone who not only flies, but has the flexibility to change what breed to plane they might choose to fly on. But bear with me.

Airlines are badly behaved at the best of times, desperately driven to create as much profit as possible. I was reminded of this as I flew the 2.5 hours from Austin back to Los Angeles last night.

As is my tradition, I watched Tenet — a film that is incomprehensible but still brings me a lot of joy (the set pieces; the score; the love story between John David Washington and Robert Pattinson). It also features a lot of planes and one very big plane stunt.

Crammed into an economy seat, about an hour into the flight I decided to take the harrowing trip to the toilet at the back of the plane. Walking down the narrow aisle, I tilted my body and affected the gait of a crab in an attempt to avoid knocking the shoulders of my fellow passengers.

In the galley I found two flight attendants squished together, attempting to get the drinks trolley sorted out. As someone exited the toilet, we all rearranged like Tetris pieces.

Entering the bathroom, I found I couldn’t stand. Stooping, my elbow knocked against the wall. Turning around 45 degrees to wash my hands involved a strange weird bent-knee shuffle, a shuffle that I completed again to exit. I actually came out of the toilet giggling at how ridiculous it all was, walking straight into one of the air stewards.

I asked what was going on, because I was sure I hadn’t grown that much since the last flight I’d taken. I was told this plane had recently changed its internal design, adding a few extra rows of seats in order to cram more passengers in. The galley, and the toilet, had to shrink to accommodate.

It reminded me of Ryanair’s thwarted plans to do away with seats altogether, simply strapping passengers down as they stood up, row after row of Hannibal-esque customers hurtling through the skies.

Despite the miracle of being in the sky in the first place (and having wifi), flying does give you the experience of what it must be like for cows packed along the serpentine ramp awaiting slaughter. And in the case of Boeing, that clunky metaphor starts to ring truer and truer every day.

It’s difficult knowing where to start with Boeing.

There was the incident in January this year where a piece of an Alaskan Airlines flight blew off the side, causing “explosive decompression”. A month later the flight controls jammed on another Boeing 737 Max plane trying to land in New York.

And this week a flight from Sydney to Auckland suddenly lost altitude, passengers turned projectiles in the blink of an eye. “Blood was on the ceiling, people broke the ceiling of the plane,” a passenger told reporters.

“I opened my eyes and there were various individuals at the top of the plane. Just stuck to the roof,” said another Boeing user, who also talked to the pilot:

“I immediately engaged with him and said, ‘What was that?’ And he openly admitted, he said, ‘I lost control of the plane. My gauges just kind of went blank on me.’”

He said for that brief moment he couldn’t control anything and that’s when the plane did what it did.”

All those flights were just this year, and Boeing.

Of course those three horrific incidents pale in comparison to the 189 people killed when a Boeing plane bound for Indonesia plunged into the ocean 13 minutes after takeoff, its flight control software overcorrecting.

Five months later another 157 people plummeted into the ground in Ethiopia when the flight control software overcorrected again, sending the plane into a fatal nose dive:

When nothing else worked to stop their descent, desperate pilots of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max reactivated the jet’s flight control software that prevents aerodynamic stalls. A report by Ethiopian investigators released Monday shows that led to a catastrophic plunge from the sky. Turning on the MCAS software sent the plane into a nosedive, increasing its descent rate from 100 feet per minute to more than 5,000 feet per minute.

Of course it all comes down to one simple thing: Greed.

This 2019 investigation paints a picture of Boeing rushing those planes (not just those two planes, but all Max’s) out the door in an attempt to one-up their one and only competitor Airbus.

One former designer on the team working on flight controls for the Max said the group had at times produced 16 technical drawings a week, double the normal rate. “They basically said, ‘We need something now,’” the designer said.

A technician who assembles wiring on the Max said that in the first months of development, rushed designers were delivering sloppy blueprints to him.

Then, yesterday, the case of the Boeing whistleblower:

John Barnett — a man in his early 60s — had been a quality manager at Boeing for decades. Back in 2019 he blew the lid on Boeing after he “discovered clusters of metal slivers hanging over the wiring that commands the flight controls.”

He said if that metal penetrated any nearby wiring, things could be “catastrophic.”

“As a quality manager at Boeing, you’re the last line of defense before a defect makes it out to the flying public. And I haven’t seen a plane out of Charleston yet that I’d put my name on saying it’s safe and airworthy.”

Now, five years on, he’d apparently killed himself.

Except he just happened to be in the middle of a whistleblower retaliation case with Boeing. His lawyers said Barnett had finally felt close to closure:

“He was in very good spirits and really looking forward to putting this phase of his life behind him and moving on. We didn’t see any indication he would take his own life. No one can believe it”. 

Last week, he’d given his formal deposition and had been quizzed by Boeing’s massive legal team. This coming Saturday he was due back in court to face more questions.

Then, “suicide.” The headlines all have it in parentheses.

He was dead from a bullet.

This isn’t the bit where Webworm turns into a conspiracy newsletter (hell, I haven’t started talking about those doctored Kate photos yet — as if she booted up her computer and opened up photoshop!) — but I think we need to employ a healthy dose of scepticism here.

A suicide in a car in a parking structure. How does that feel to you?

And if John Barnett did take his own life, I’d argue Boeing isn’t off the hook. His brother said Barnett had suffered from anxiety and panic attacks over the whole whistleblower thing.

But one man up against a giant corporate behemoth that was already responsible for the deaths of 346 people: Why would they possibly care about one more life?

David.

If you work at Boeing, or have insight into this story, feel free to confidentially get in touch: davidfarrier@protonmail.com. Otherwise, see you in the comments.

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