Agree, great guy, putting his ethics ahead of his career
> but he went around giving interviews about them
Hmmm, gets a bit murky here. If he wanted to save lives, there's a very clear path to alerting the FAA. But he didn't do that. This sounds a bit more like he was trying to save his career. Which brings in question why he quit in the first place, and how voluntary that was to begin with.
Is there? I doubt you can just call up the FAA and be like, "hey, my former employer is going to get people killed." The FAA will naturally call the employer and the employer will naturally defend themselves, calling the ex-employee a kook.
You probably need to generate awareness of the issues in public and show the FAA you're not the only engineer who thinks those practices are unsafe. Then, and only then when you have some accredited clout behind your accusation, can you start holding the FAA's feet to the fire for inaction. And after that, maybe they will investigate.
It's a thing, trust me, and works a lot better than you assumed above. You absolutely don't need an article in the NY Times to initiate an FAA audit.