I don't this this allegedly happened. What authorities are saying Boeing killed a whistleblower?

The whistleblower was found dead in their car of an 'apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound'.

Seems extremely unlikely that they would decide to kill themselves after 32 years at Boeing and deciding to blow the whistle.

"Barnett, who spent decades working for Boeing at its plants in Everett, Wash., and North Charleston, S.C., had repeatedly alleged that Boeing's manufacturing practices had declined — and that rather than improve them, he added, managers had pressured workers not to document potential defects and problems. "

I can see someone whistle-blowing in good faith, realizing they made a mistake and called out the company for something that it wasn't doing or something that wasn't actually a problem, and killing themselves.

I can also see someone whistle-blowing in good faith, getting harassed by ex-coworkers/managers or the court of public opinion, and just getting overwhelmed by the negative attention and feeling bad for the betrayal and killing themselves.

I can't really see a company faking the suicide of someone that already whistleblew and got national attention. That seems like a great way to exacerbate a problem that, if you leave it alone, probably won't be made worse by your leaving it alone. Like, what, a Boeing executive hired an assassin off the dark web with the click of a button to kill someone that already did the thing he was going to do? Executives can make some pretty poor decisions, so I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it would be a pretty wild mistake to make.

I can see a lifer, someone who've spent their whole life at a single company, reacting this way. Their identity is tied so closely to their employer that having to "blow the whistle" probably feels like a terrible betrayal against the company.

> using parts from scrap bins

This is a good micro-example. Scrap bins! Sounds horrible! But is it? Do you know? Or is it just common practice? Is it called a scrap bin in the media to drive a narrative, when really it's just a parts bin like any other?

We don't know.

I visited the Airbus facility in Hamburg, about 20 years ago. They showed us lots of "scrap bins" at the various production lines. And "scrap bins" is what they called those indeed.

I particularly recall one with titanium (AFAIR) Hi-Lok bolts[1] that didn't pass the xray for defects. They told us those would be melted.

They looked flawless and were all brand new, nicely anodized. We were allowed to grab a few each, as souveniers. These are not cheap (I think the guys said they cost around 10 EUR each, at the time, but I may misremember) and a plane uses a shitload of them.

Now lets say you're out for whatever reason. That would halt your production line. If your safety culture is shitty, you may decide to just use those Hi-Loks that passed xray with 95% or whatever threshold suits you overcoming your shortage ...

And the above sounds to me like that's what the whisteblower suggested happened at Boeing.

[1] https://www.lisi-aerospace.com/en/product/hi-lok-and-hi-lite...

Scrap bin would allude to using parts that are out of tolerance, time expired, or single use ie regardless of cycles or time on wing, the part is required to be replaced every disassembly.

This can include parts that have been assembled only to be disassembled because an issue was found before it left the shop.

… I don’t know how to respond to this. This is basically epistemic relativism. Yes, we know that scrap bins are for scrap. I am 100% sure that there is never any reason to be pulling stuff from scrap bins ad-hoc in order to avoid having to reorder parts.

As far as your point is “the whistleblowers could be lying, the video investigations could be staged/one-offs, and the ongoing massive increase in safety incidents could be unrelated to the publicly-bragged-about intentionally-done corner cutting”, that’s fair, the jury is still out. Figuratively, ofc, because they aren’t yet facing any real weighty investigations AFAIK, only small ones.

But “maybe the you’re supposed to use parts from scrap bins”? No. Not for fucking airplanes

EDIT: an analogy; is it ever okay to store passwords in plain text? Maybe, if by “plain text” you mean the text that’s encrypted by a normal auth system. But that’s just not how that word is used, and is giving an absurd benefit of the doubt to people who do not deserve it

Scrap bins are where you throw parts that fail quality control. If you have no part at all and your management doesn’t allow you to halt production you might install a failed part and pray.