The FAA made headlines this week with a big announcement. There’s an even more important story lurking behind that. The American flying public is a whole lot safer today than most realize. They never were told about the danger. Ignorance is bliss, the safety watchdogs decided. Then hid all the gory details. Nobody has a clue how bad the situation really was. The only reason safety issues are being addressed today is because brave insiders did the right thing. They risked everything, including their lives and liberty, to blow the safety whistle. Some of them, like John Barnett, didn’t survive the encounter. One of the first insiders to alert the public was Charles Shi. His case is also at a tragic end but there’s still time to help.
New FAA leadership
Reportedly, the FAA intentionally covered up critical safety issues. The lid was ripped right off the Boeing can of worms when a door panel blew out in March of last year. Recently, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed their “tougher oversight will continue indefinitely.”
The official assurance came from the agency’s departing head, Mike Whitaker. He tucked his tail between his legs and announced his early departure, timed with President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Sean Duffy has been nominated to clean up the mess in the Department of Transportation left behind by Pete Buttigieg.
The last place one would expect to find a Boeing whistleblower is China. We may have entirely different political structures but every American who flies can thank Shanghai resident Charles Shi. Back in August of 2017, we learned from Reuters that he had previously alerted the FAA to serious part production problems. That was his job. He was the supply chain manager.
He worked for a Chinese company that subcontracted with U.S. aerospace giant Boeing. The parts Shi became concerned with were installed on every single 737 in the air, at the time. The feds quickly tangled his evidence in red tape and tried their best not to confirm the truth of his allegations.
Our reporting of the facts, as disclosed by Reuters and a few other mainstream outlets, zoomed in on several aspects of the story which the public was being misdirected away from. When Mr. Shi saw our coverage, he contacted us to say thank you.
Because we were telling the real story that nobody else seemed willing to touch, he personally provided us with a copy of all his evidence. It was disturbingly detailed. The FAA had seen it all. If we could see the safety crucial aspects, the federal agency would be grossly negligent by missing them.
A good deed
There is no doubt that Mr. Shi did America, especially Americans who fly, a “good deed.” None of those, a corollary to Murphy’s law says, “goes unpunished.” The information he provided, to the FAA directly and the public indirectly, about “half baked” parts, eventually produced a result.
This past June, top administrator Whitaker admitted his agency “should have had a better handle on what was going on.” He confessed using a “light touch” on Boeing while staying “too focused on paperwork audits and not focused enough on inspections.” Without Shi and the other whistleblowers taking massive risks, they would still be covering it all up.
Over the years, as his case has been progressing, Mr. Shi remained in touch to provide relevant updates. The FAA didn’t like any of them. We recently received one. It is most certainly not good news.
After hearing coverage regarding congressional attention to his case, he writes, “I can hardly believe my whistleblowing case was mentioned by Senate hearing. Thank you for everything you told the world with truth about my case.” Then he broke the bad news. “My cancer progressed 1.8 time bigger so next therapy must be found to treat the cancer or it will spread all over and I may die in a short period of time.”
That’s not the worst part. “The even worse news is my wife who re-married me in 2021 when my cancer was diagnosed, now is deserting me by not giving money for me to receive new medical treatment.” To make a long story short, he trusted her when he shouldn’t have. “I am now driven to the corner, wondering if you may write something and appeal for international help on financial assistance to save my life: Thank you for everything that you may do in this regard.”
If you would like to help, please contact this author directly at: [email protected]. We’re personally convinced that the FAA wouldn’t be getting a major overhaul today if it wasn’t for Mr. Shi’s persistence. He wanted the problems fixed before everyone was crying over tombstones. That’s what the press calls an ironic twist.
