The Boeing Company

Netflix documentary Freefall: A Reckoning of Boeing chronicles the deepening corporate crisis, alleged safety failures and tragic death of whistleblower John Barnett

An explosive new Netflix documentary threatens to blow the lid on alleged systemic safety failures at Boeing as well as the tragic death of whistleblower John Barnett.

Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing is a sequel to the 2022 documentary film Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, which examined the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max jets in 2018 and 2019 that claimed 346 lives.

This new offering, from director Rory Kennedy, takes a closer look at Barnett’s battle against Boeing and his later suicide, as well as investigating the testimony of other whistleblowers, who claim managers told them on occasion to overlook safety problems.

Following Boeing’s 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas, the company was accused of being governed by Wall Street executives obsessed with profit, rather than an engineer-led organisation.

The company faced allegations of prioritising cost-cutting and outsourcing vital engineering work, and has continued to face production crises, including improperly installed wiring and unsealed door plugs that blew out mid-flight on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in January 2024.

Ahead of the documentary’s release on August 19 , we take a closer look at some of the biggest disasters in Boeing’s history.

Tenerife Airport Disaster (1977) — 583 Fatalities

On March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747 passenger jets (KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736) collided on a foggy runway at Los Rodeos Airport (now Tenerife North Airport) in the Canary Islands, Spain, resulting in 583 fatalities. Known as the ‘Tenerife Airport Disaster’, it remains the deadliest aviation accident in history.

A series of events led to the collision. Neither planes were supposed to be there; earlier that day, a bombing at Gran Canaria Airport forced planes, including the KLM flight and the Pan Am flight, to divert to the smaller airport in Tenerife.

That diversion overwhelmed the small airport, forcing pilots to taxi up and down the active runway because taxiways were blocked.

Then the thick fog came rolling in, impacting visibility. And finally, there was a fatal misunderstanding.

The Pan Am jet was taxiing on the runway but missed its intended exit. At the same time, the KLM pilots mistakenly believed they were cleared for takeoff and accelerated, crashing straight into the hidden Pan Am plane.

The impact and the resulting fire killed all 248 people on board the KLM plane and 335 of the 396 people on board the Pan Am plane, with all 61 survivors being in the front section of the aircraft.

Japan Airlines Flight 123 (1985) — 520 Fatalities

Japan Airlines Flight 123 was a domestic flight travelling from Tokyo to Osaka on the evening of 12 August 1985. But just 12 minutes after takeoff, the Boeing 747 suffered a severe structural failure and explosive decompression. After flying under minimal control for 32 minutes, the plane crashed in the area of Mount Takamagahara.

The aircraft had 524 people on board, and the initial crash killed all 15 crew members along with between 460-490 of the 509 passengers on board. An estimated 20 to 50 passengers survived the initial crash but died from their injuries while awaiting rescue, leaving only four survivors.

The crash, which claimed the lives of 520 people in total, is the deadliest single-aircraft accident in aviation history and remains the deadliest aviation incident in Japan.

Japan’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission – assisted by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board – concluded that the structural failure was caused by a faulty repair by Boeing technicians following a tailstrike seven years earlier. A tailstrike occurs when the rear part of an aircraft’s fuselage hits the runway or ground, and usually happens during takeoff if the nose is lifted too aggressively, or during landing if the pilot raises the nose too high while trying to touch down.

When the faulty repair eventually failed, it resulted in a rapid decompression that ripped off a large portion of the tail and caused the loss of function of all hydraulic systems and flight controls.

Charkhi Dadri Mid-Air Collision (1996) — 349 Fatalities

The catastrophic Charkhi Dadri collision occurred mid-air when Saudia Flight 763 (a Boeing 747) and Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907 (an Ilyushin Il-76) collided over Haryana, India.

The crash, which took place on 12 November 1996, killed all 349 people aboard both aircraft, making it the deadliest mid-air collision in aviation history.

It was found to have been caused by the flight crew of Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907 failing to maintain their assigned altitude. The Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 descended past its cleared altitude of 15,000 feet right into the path of the ascending Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight 763 at 14,000 feet.

This stemmed from three key factors. The Kazakh flight crew’s English was poor and inside the cockpit, only the flight engineer – not the pilots – spoke English, forcing them to rely on a radio operator for continuous Russian translation of Air Traffic Control (ATC) instructions.

The Kazakh crew also exhibited confusion and poor communication during their descent, struggling to interpret the ATC’s directions as the two planes converged on intersecting flight paths.

There were also equipment limitations to contend with the Air Traffic Control radar at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport was a primary surveillance radar which meant controllers could see the planes’ distance and bearing but could not independently verify their altitudes.

Furthemore, neither aircraft was equipped with a Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), which would have alerted the pilots to the impending collision.

The accident led the International Civil Aviation Organization to make it mandatory for commercial aircraft to be equipped with TCAS, establish English as the universal language for aviation communication, and mandate that arrival and departure routes at busy international hubs be separated.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (2014) — 298 Fatalities

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down over eastern Ukraine by a surface-to-air missile on 17 July 2014. All 283 passengers and 15 crew members were killed.

All contact with the aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, was lost when it was about 50 kilometres from the Ukraine–Russia border, and wreckage from the aircraft landed near Hrabove in Ukraine, 40 km from the border.

It was said to have been shot down by Russian-backed forces. The Russian government denied involvement in the shooting down of the aircraft, but on 17 November 2022, following a trial in absentia in the Netherlands, two Russians and a Ukrainian separatist were found guilty of murdering all 298 people on board the flight. The Dutch court also ruled that Russia was in control of the separatist forces fighting in eastern Ukraine at the time.

MH17 was Malaysia Airlines’ second aircraft loss during 2014, after the disappearance of Flight 370 four months prior on 8 March. It is also the deadliest aircraft shoot-down incident to date

China Airlines Flight 611 (2002) – 225 Fatalities

China Airlines Flight 611 was travelling from Taiwan to Hong Kong International Airport when it disintegrated midair and crashed into the Taiwan Strait, just 20 minutes after takeoff. It killed all 225 people on board.

The in-flight breakup was caused by metal fatigue cracks from a tail strike at Kai Tak Airport on 7 of February 1980. The aircraft had not been properly repaired according to Boeing policies and manuals. Metal fatigue from over 22 years of service and repeated pressurization cycles caused tiny cracks that led to the aircraft’s breakup.

The crash remains the deadliest in Taiwan, and the second-deadliest accident in China Airlines history, behind China Airlines Flight 140 with 264 fatalities.

Lion Air Flight 610 (2018) – 189 Fatalities

Lion Air Flight 610 was travelling from Soekarno–Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, to Depati Amir Airport in Indonesia on 29 October 2018, when it crashed into the sea 13 minutes after take off.

All 189 passengers – 181 passengers and eight crew – onboard the Boeing 737 MAX 8 were killed.

The Indonesian government’s search and rescue found debris and human remains soon after from a 280-kilometre-wide (150-nautical-mile) area, and the flight data recorder (FDR) was found on 1 November and recovered for analysis.

A subsequent investigation, led by the National Transportation Safety Committee, revealed that a new software function in the flight control system caused the aircraft to nose down.

That function, called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), had been intentionally omitted from aircraft documentation for aircrews by Boeing, so the pilots did not know about it, and did not know what it could do.

Investigators concluded that an external device on the aircraft, the angle-of-attack (AoA) sensor, was miscalibrated due to improper maintenance which sent erroneous data to MCAS. In turn, MCAS responded by pushing the nose of the plane down.

The problem had occurred on the same aircraft during its immediately preceding flight, and the pilots had recovered using a standard checklist. But during the fatal flight, the pilots did not properly follow the checklist, with the result that MCAS remained active and repeatedly put the aircraft into an unsafe nose-down position until it crashed into the water.

The United States Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing issued warnings and training advisories to all operators of the Boeing 737 MAX series. But similar issues caused the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on 10 March 2019, leading to a worldwide grounding of all 737 MAX aircraft.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 (2019) – 157 Fatalities

Just five months after the Lion Air Flight crash, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed near the town of Bishoftu on 10 March 2019. The plane went down just six minutes after takeoff, and all 149 passengers and 8 crew members on board died.

The crash was again caused by a fault in the plane’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), the flight stabilizing system developed by Boeing for the MAX 8. Due to a failure in the sensor, the aircraft’s nose was repeatedly pitched down against the pilots’ inputs, eventually leading the plane to crash.

It was the second accident involving a MAX 8, and prompted a two-year worldwide grounding of the jet and an investigation into how the aircraft was approved for passenger service.

The documentary film Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing will be released globally on Netflix on August 19, 2026

WARNING – DISTRESSING CONTENT: New Netflix documentary Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, investigates the story of Boeing whistleblower John Barnett, who was found dead in his truck in 2024

John Barnett worked for Boeing for 32 years before turning whistleblower and dying in mysterious circumstances.

New Netflix documentary, Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, explores the story of Barnett, who publicly condemned Boeing’s safety processes before he was found dead in his truck. He was in the process of testifying against the company.

From 2010, Barnett was employed as a quality manager at the North Charleston plant, which built the longhaul 787 Dreamliner, before retiring in 2017 on health grounds.

After Boeing merged with a former rival McDonnell Douglas, several former Boeing employees alleged the company started focussing more on increasing profits rather than safety and quality.

Barnett told the Today Show before his death: “From day one, it’s just all been about schedule, and hurry up, and just get it done. Push a plane out. We’re behind schedule. We don’t have time to worry about issues that y’all bring up.”

He alleged there were severe production and safety flaws such as defective oxygen systems and metal shavings near critical wiring on the 787 Dreamliner program.

Just before he left Boeing in 2017, Barnett filed a complaint against the company, accusing bosses of retaliating against him for raising safety concerns. He was outspoken on the issue with journalists – and in 2022 appeared in acclaimed director Rory Kennedy’s investigative film Downfall: The Case Against Boeing.

But then, on March 9, 2024, Barnett was found dead in his truck with a gunshot wound to his head.

Deeply affected by Barnett’s death and ongoing concerns about Boeing’s safety culture, Kennedy reunited with her team to produce the documentary sequel, Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, which is being released on August 19, 2026.

Speaking to the Guardian about Barnett’s death, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Kennedy said: “I was horrified and heartbroken. I spoke to his mom pretty immediately after we had heard that news. She said to me, ‘We need to make sure John’s story gets out there,’ and that was a big part of why we decided to revisit this.

“I’ve never done a documentary follow-up in this kind of way, but we all felt that Boeing is such a big company, and we all fly these airplanes all over the world. I don’t want one of these planes falling out of the sky, and I feel like I have a lot of inside knowledge and also connections to understanding what’s going on inside of Boeing, and I just felt like we’ve got to stay at this.”

Details of the circumstances surrounding Barnett’s death came to light when his mother sued Boeing in a wrongful death suit in March 2025. The complaint alleged that Barnett was subjected to a campaign of harassment, abuse and humiliation after he raised concerns about safety issues. It further claimed that the conduct of the company was “the clear, foreseeable cause” of his death. In September that year, Boeing settled the lawsuit, agreeing to pay at least $50,000 to Barnett’s mother, who, in return, agreed to drop her claims that the company contributed to her son’s death by suicide.

The complaint contained a copy of Barnett’s suicide note, and the annexes presented the full police report concluding that he died by his own hand.

In conversations with Fortune in March 2025, the family’s longstanding counsel Rob Turkewitz added further details on his client’s last hours.

He said that on the evening of March 8, 2024, Barnett left the law offices of Boeing’s outside counsel in Charleston after testifying for two days in his OSHA case against the company. OSHA rules make it unlawful to retaliate against a whistleblower.

Barnett was giving his account of how Boeing allegedly violated its own policies and procedures, and FAA rules, during his seven years as a quality inspector at the North Charleston plant.

He’d delayed a trip back to his home in Louisiana to finish his deposition the next day, which was a Saturday. Videos cited in the police report show Barnett leaving the hotel around 8:30pm, and getting in his orange Dodge truck.

When Barnett failed to show up the next morning for his final round of testimony, Turkewitz called the Holiday Inn to conduct a welfare check. It was then that a hotel employee saw Barnett slumped in the front seat of his vehicle.

Charleston police arrived to discover Barnett barefoot and clutching a Smith and Wesson pistol in his right hand. His right temple showed a bullet entry wound, and an exit wound appeared in the back of his head.

On the seat next to Barnett’s body lay a message written on a single page of a red-covered notebook, with sentences written in all directions.

It contained phrases including: “America come together or die!!! Pray that the motherfk…ers who destroyed my life pay!!! I pray that Boeing pays!!! Bury me face down so that Boeing and their lying ass leaders can kiss my ass.”

Elsewhere: “I can’t do this any longer!!! F-k Boeing!!! Family and friends, I love you’ll [sic].”

“To my family and friends, I found my purpose! I am at peace! I love you more John/Mitch Barnett aka Swampy Fununcle Mitch.”

The complaint also included a heartbreaking email that Barnett sent Turkewitz in 2021, which read: “I can understand the direct costs that we can establish, ie lost pay, bonuses, etc. What I’m struggling with is how do you restore a person’s overall outlook on life? I used to be a very happy-go-lucky guy who loved his job and the products he built. I had a very positive outlook on life. Boeing absolutely destroyed my outlook on life. What is a person’s ‘outlook on life’ worth? How to put a price on that?'”

Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing is scheduled to debut on Netflix on August 19, 2026 .

For mental health support, contact the Samaritans on 116 123, email them at jo@samaritans.org or visit samaritans.org to find your nearest branch

People picking this side of the plane could get a lot less – and for some that could actually be a good thing

When aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus build planes, they design the windows to line up perfectly with standard, comfortable legroom (usually a 31-to-32-inch seat pitch). But most budget airlines make a change to their seating set-up that some passengers might actually prefer.

Because aircraft seats are mounted on floor tracks, airlines can move them freely. Budget airlines like Ryanair, Jet2, TUI and Easyjet will often deliberately push the seat rows much closer together (down to a tight 28-to-29-inch pitch) to fit extra rows onto the plane.

Although the seats move, the window cut-outs in the metal body of the plane stay. It’s this shrinking legroom that instantly forces the seats and windows out of sync.

Most window seats that passengers pick will have a view out of the plane, but some are known to have restricted views. In some cases, there are seats that have no window at all.

While this might sound like a complaint waiting to happen, some people may actually see this as a perk. Unlike the ‘extra legroom’ trick, this flat surface offers the best spot for those wanting to take a nap during their flight – or those nervous fliers who would rather not know what being 30,000ft in the air looks like.

Certain people claim that the window-free wall space offers a great place to rest a pillow. These misaligned seats often run down the left-hand side of the plane.

For people wanting to benefit from less of a view, check your plane’s seating chart before confirming your choice. You can often see how the window situation will work.

• Ryanair (Boeing 737-800): The misalignment runs heavily down the left side of the aircraft. It is so pronounced that Seat 11A and 11F often has no window at all.
• EasyJet (Airbus A319/A320): Highly noticeable misalignment on the left-hand side. The final rows (Row 31 on A320s and Row 26 on A319s) are completely windowless as well as certain overwing exit rows which may also have slightly altered alignment.
• Jet2 (Boeing 737-800 or Airbus A321neo): On their Boeing 737s, you will find the Jet2 windows out of alignment past the front bulkhead. If you book an “A” seat on the left, you will frequently find yourself staring directly at the plastic pillar between two windows rather than out of the glass.
• TUI (Boeing 737 MAX or 787 Dreamliner): On TUI’s short-haul Boeing 737s, the misalignment works exactly like Ryanair and Jet2 models. However, if you are flying on TUI’s long-haul Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the rule does not apply as long-haul aircrafts usually maintain standard legroom pitches, meaning the seats and windows stay properly aligned.

If your goal is to sleep on your next flight, sitting on the left side (Seats A) of a short-haul flight on these airlines gives you a higher statistical chance of getting a solid wall or a heavily forward-shifted window to rest your head against.

If you actually want to enjoy the view, you are better off sitting on the right side (Seats F). Booking these seats may also offer a little ‘extra’ legroom at a fraction of the cost.