No real whistleblower is going to publish their name, rank, and serial number etc. The corporate PR department sure isn't ever going to tell you such things. Investigative journalism and reporters who can be trusted to verify sources and preserve their anonymity is all but dead these days. The Government might publish something that isn't a total white-wash in 5 years. Or they might not. Who can tell?
It's academic anyway, though, because the FAA will have those records and then the information will be either verified or debunked.
;)
The second element is that this particular junior engineer has seen enough to know not to share his name. Naivety goes both ways, and the rhetorical engineer tends to leave identifiable information if they don’t think getting caught is a problem. This one does. He’s asked internally, and the answer wasn’t reassuring. I’ve been on the receiving end of “What do you think we should do about this?” and hard trade-offs; if the manager knows what they are doing and they are not pushing bad stories, the junior engineer learns something.
The last element is that this is not new: very senior engineers complaining about penny-pushing MBAs ruining the company and “that won’t stop until someone gets hurt” are as old as the merger with McDonnel-Douglas.
Would I trust the technical details and the recommendation of that particular engineer? Lord No: I know nothing about airplanes. But I know what a dysfunctional operation sounds like, and that sounds like the bassoon—but there’s the strings, the brass, and the percussions playing the same tune.