Delta finds fake jet aircraft engine parts with forged airworthiness documents
fortune.com
fortune.com
If they weren't, Delta would say so, since it makes them look better. That they won't say means the parts were used in service.
> None of Delta’s aircraft are currently flying with unapproved parts, and the discovery hasn’t affected flight operations
How do they know? Even these fake parts were not detected by Delta but "were detected during engine work by an unnamed third party."
Or they don't know.
> to address the issue of illicit trade
Now, take your car, drive it for that long at 50 kph, and you come out at 500'000 km (or 312'500 miles, if that's how you tick.) before major components need inspecting and/or changing.
That's how good the parts are, and how well the traceability of those parts is working.
...but we are talking about forged documents. How can we sure the trace records are not forged?
Cross checking take time
CFM, the engine manufacturer, became aware of the issues in June when a Portuguese repair shop alerted it to the existence of allegedly forged documents bearing its name
So presumably, all (?) they had to do was trace the paperwork from all parts supplied through AOG Technics, and contact the suppliers in those documents to verify the documents/parts were real.
To make an undetectable forgery would require faking all documentation right up to the original manufacturer.
Saying it has no foundation, ipso facto it is baseless, is just laundering your subjective opinion to make it sound objective.
The aero parts business is supposed to be a chain of trust, similar to the chain of custody you'd have for court evidence. It's there so you can ascertain provenance of parts in case something goes wrong.
Inspections are there to "prove" that parts are safe to fly, or at least as close as you can get vs the cost to inspect, overhaul, replace etc.
Any level of certainty has a cost attached to it. The fact that they found these parts and that investigations are ongoing is certain level of proof that the system works. The other, more drastic, form of proof is that the number of crashes per year due to faulty parts is kept low.
As to "fake" parts, we don't know the whole situation yet; they may be genuine parts but just may lack certification. This is what the investigation is for.
> As to "fake" parts, we don't know the whole situation yet; they may be genuine parts but just may lack certification
If this was the case it wouldn’t have forged certification. The only way this would be true is if delta was buying genuine parts from sketchy resellers and distributors which doesn’t make them look much better.
The damning evidence to all this is the forgery. If you buy “off brand” generic parts, you should know that you are. To forge a document is a deliberate, non accidental, action to lie and deceive. Why would anyone do that unless the part was inferior?
Could be refurbished or used parts being sold with or without inspection to save cost on (re)certification.
We just don’t know at this point.
That is inferior to new, considering physical goods have a limited mechanical lifespan.
Either way, it misses the point that the product is a lie sold on false pretenses. Lying about what you sell is not a good sign. There is no world, no product conditions, no anything, where a lie about what’s being sold should be tolerated. Fraud a crime for a reason.
> We just don’t know at this point.
At this point I already know I’d pick the plane with genuine certified parts if I had the choice.
Maybe. The bathtub curve exists. I trust the certification process. I’m sure used parts are serviceable in some cases.
> Either way, it misses the point that the product is a lie sold on false pretenses.
It doesn’t because I am only offering an explanation of why someone would lie.
> At this point I already know I’d pick the plane with genuine certified parts if I had the choice.
Of course.
It seems like you interpreted my comment as some kind of defense of these parts or the people selling them. That was not my intent.
To save certification costs. For many safety critical parts, the actual manufacturing is a small part of the cost - the testing / certification process is the bulk of it.
(This is no excuse, natch - the part may or may not be inferior, but without the process we have no way to know; and for safety critical applications WE NEED TO KNOW.)
This is super important and why the other poster really doesn't know what they're talking about.
These things are most definitely tracked, anyone who thinks otherwise is encouraged to do a search for MTBF, MTTR, etc. Even the most simple manufacturing plant will track these and do things like keep parts on hand or not based upon them.
When authentic parts break they can be traced back to the origin, investigated why did they break and what changes are needed in manufacturing to prevent future parts from also breaking, and whether the process could mean other planes need to be grounded before the part fails on them too.
With inauthentic parts you don't know why it works and you don't know how it fails and you can't track back anything in the chain of manufacturing because you don't know who you're dealing with. Which is why aerospace industry doesn't use anything but original parts with tractable history.
I tend to take that sort of cynical view too, though there is a more generous explanation that could be¹ possible: they haven't absolutely finished checking yet, and don't want to say something that they later need to correct. That could look worse than being vague to start with.
--
[1] caveat: I know little of their parts tracking systems, I don't know how likely it is that a more definitive answer cannot be given that quickly.
I say this because I have 0 faith in corporations. I believe corporate decision making is guided by (a) what they can get away with and (b) what minimizes their downside.
Accepting a more generous explanation could be true doesn't mean I'm going to believe it actually is without further evidence!
When it comes to aviation related issues, I tend to assume corporate reasoning to go something like: They make somewhat of a better effort to be sincere, not because they are somehow more trustworthy than in other fields, but rather because of the fear they have if they were caught in a lie.
With something like software, it might suck, but they could generally pay a fine, or testify in front of congress and move on with their life.
With something involving aviation, they could be culpable for the loss of human life, or have a permanent mark of being unsafe ala TWA. This isn't even to say that I would necessarily believe that the executives of these companies would care about the loss of human life, but merely that the risks associated with getting caught are so much higher that, even someone with an inability to feel empathy would understand how damaging it would be to their career - it would be in their best interest to pretend to have integrity.
I suppose 1 could be true and 2 false, but that seems less likely
One could say the fake part was not “approved”.
That being said, this particular UK company caused the biggest civil aerospace scandal since the 737 MAX. I have zero tolerance for jeopardizing tracibility of parts due to negligence, what the UK company did is outright criminal.
Unfortunately, there is nothing Delta and other Airlines coupd have done to prevent this from happening.
You posit that the necessary information was not available to Delta, at least not immediately, due to outsourced engine maintenance. Why can't Delta require their contractor (which wasn't the supplier, AOG) to check that documentation meets requirements? Why can't Delta check the documentation themselves once it is available, prior to the engines needing later service as in this case?
It was not a problem of absent documentation, because that is obviously rigorously checked by everyone in the chain. So Delta, and regulators, force suppliers to check all documentation for parts. Delta doesn't have to check their sub-tier suppliers documentation, since their tier one is a certified company (in Europe that would ne EASA Chapter 145 for maintenance). What Delta does, is auditing their tier 1s, those tier 1s audit their tier 1s (Delta's sub tier suppliers), and ao on and ao forth.
AOG was audited and certified, which means their paper wirk, process discriptions and so on were compliant. And then AOG cheated, kind of like showing good parts for audit and supplying crap later. If AOG, or anyone else, is that criminal, the only way to catch them is by chance or an investigation after a part fails.
Am I surprised? Not really. The whole thing is a pisstake because it seems so inconceivable on its face. Nobody would expect someone to do this in the industry at that level for sure. And so the kind of processes needed to mitigate it were unlikely to be employed.
However, in a very tightly controlled and regulated industry such as this I also don’t think it is unreasonable to expect that they should have the level of verification and just plain awareness of their suppliers to not get caught with their pants down on this en masse.
This isn’t exactly counterfeit and legit bins in an Amazon warehouse getting mixed together before you get the die roll on if you get the genuine $10 kitchen tool or if you get the alibaba special when it shows up at your front door.
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, when reporters went to visit the company’s headquarters in London, nobody in the building had heard of AOG Technics.
This means that nobody at Delta nor any other airline even took the time to pay a visit to the company's so-called headquarters. For an airline looking to choose a new supplier for airplane parts, I'd say they skipped even to most basic due diligence checks.
So if they knew how the counterfeits got into the system they could answer you if a particular part might be one of the suspect parts, but I don’t know if they can spit out a list of things to check in five seconds or if that’s two people working for a month.
But I will speculate that for recalls they would have to be able to answer that relatively quickly. Where are all of the Batch ABC-123 bolts that we bought, because they were all heat treated incorrectly and embrittled. Not answering is the sort of thing that should make the FAA’s sphincters pucker at the speed of sound.
I worked on CoC for software, and we knew we were trying to emulate the hardware chain but not exactly, so a lot of the finer details were out of my purview. With software the manifest can travel with the “part” at all times.
> Delta would not say if the engines with the fraudulently documented parts had been on planes while they were in service
Yes, we flew planes with dodgy parts.
> None of Delta’s aircraft are currently flying with unapproved parts
The dodgy parts have since been replaced on our planes... (note the "currently").
> the discovery hasn’t affected flight operations
...but we didn't ground our planes before taking out the dodgy parts, we used a regular maintenance window.
We can assume some aircraft have fake parts out there, or there wouldn't be a market for them.
But it must be hard to trace fake parts.
But then again, they also buy direct from factory and keep parts on hand for decades.
It's more likely that they haven't checked every single plane yet to be able to say either way.
It's not a should, could, maybe, it's a your fleet is not flying if you find a problem like this and haven't checked.
The odds of all 21 parts being found and them knowing same-business-day that the same part of the same supplier isn't on any of their other planes is approximately zero. The odds of even finding all of these 21 occurrences is slim although not zero.
Just logistically there were likely several days or even weeks where they knew there were fraudulent parts in the wild and didn't know whether or not any in-service planes were affected. You're not required to ground your fleet on a hunch, you are allowed to investigate to see if there is actually an issue before bankrupting your legacy airline. I'm not aware of Delta grounding its entire fleet anytime in recent history, so clearly your statement is false.
But have any of the fleet ever flown with them in the past? Much harder question which likely will take some time to correlate.
It says they couldn't say if there had been any flights previously in service with unapproved parts.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/AOG+Technics/@51.497673,-0...
"I asked for a flux capacitor but received a food processor instead. But it does make good guacamole."
> American Airlines Group Inc., United Airlines Holdings Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co. previously disclosed finding parts from AOG Technics Ltd. on aircraft engines.
Southwest confirmed having flown bad parts about a month ago. https://fortune.com/2023/09/08/southwest-air-engine-suspect-...
First news about the supplier appears to be Aug 31: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-31/fake-spar...
More likely they would just never comment whether it makes them look better or not, because otherwise for the reason you stated you could always gather the information they didn’t want you to have in the negative case.
All Delta is saying is that they aren't flying any of the bad parts they found. Just a bunch of PR fluff, nothing of substance.
If that ends up being their final answer, with no future update either affirming or denying that the engines with the fraudulently documented parts had been on planes, I will agree with you. But of now, seems like they are in a state of “we haven’t any fraudulently documented parts in use, but we haven’t checked everything 100% yet to claim so without running a risk of being wrong and having to backtrack later.”
However, as these news just now came out, I think it is fair for them to say “we cannot confirm” at the moment (as long as a more concrete update is coming in the future). It is way less problematic to say “we cannot confirm” and update later with “everything is clear, all is good” or “we found fraudulently documented parts to be in use”, rather than claim one now before all the information is available, and then backtrack.
And as others have pointed out already - Delta said they were sure none of the aircraft currently operating use fraudulently documented parts, but obviously it takes more time to make sure that none of the aircraft had used fraudulently documented parts before.
May help with getting some extra context on where and how these things get into the system.
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/riven-by-deceit-the-cras...
"...a former drug trafficker from Colombia told South Florida detectives that she had switched to trafficking aircraft parts instead. After all, the money was almost as good — by some estimates, during the early 1990s, unapproved parts represented a $2 billion industry."
Could also just be a knockoff that's good enough most of the time.
Large flag carriers like Delta also have real staff and processes, and it looks like they're doing inspections and sometimes catching bogus parts; smaller organizations may not do that.
> the FAA officials who played down the danger were not necessarily wrong either
> unapproved parts cause annoying breakdowns and increase maintenance costs, but don’t directly cause crashes, simply because there are very few individual parts on an aircraft which could cause a crash if they fail
> Redundancy in aircraft design largely shields us from the consequences, with the primary exception being very old aircraft like LN-PAA which predate many modern airworthiness requirements.
> Even then, it took multiple unapproved parts in multiple locations, plus inadequate inspections and poor documentation, to actually bring down the plane.
> So much was wrong with LN-PAA that its various faults started to interact in unpredictable ways, creating conditions which no one had foreseen, least of all the pilots, who probably went to their graves without any idea of what had befallen them.
> That being said, the probable continued existence of unapproved parts on the market should not really be cause for alarm to the flying public. [...] The fact is that Partnair flight 394 remains the only crash of a commercial airliner linked to unapproved parts, placing the issue rather far down the list of problems that cause the most crashes.
It's worth a read, but the summary is that the problem is mostly under control and unlikely to cause a crash.
> In general, this is because unapproved parts cause annoying breakdowns and increase maintenance costs, but don’t directly cause crashes, simply because there are very few individual parts on an aircraft which could cause a crash if they fail. Redundancy in aircraft design largely shields us from the consequences, with the primary exception being very old aircraft like LN-PAA which predate many modern airworthiness requirements. Even then, it took multiple unapproved parts in multiple locations, plus inadequate inspections and poor documentation, to actually bring down the plane.
Primarily, that there is only one angle of attack sensor that feeds the MCAS system.
There are two sensors, but the system just doesn't compare them. It just takes the result from one sensor and uses it regardless of errors.
For comparison, Airbus A320 actually has a very similar system. But it is fed by 3 different angle of attack sensors. All 3 sensors are constantly compared against each other.
I almost forgot! Below quotes are straight from Wikipedia MCAS page.
> Boeing's own internal design guidelines related to the 737 MAX's development stated that the system should "not have any objectionable interaction with the piloting of the airplane" and "not interfere with dive recovery".[68] The operation of MCAS violated those.[69]
> the specific failure modes that could lead to unintended MCAS activation (such as an erroneous high AOA input to the MCAS) were not simulated as part of these functional hazard assessment validation tests. As a result, additional flight deck effects (such as IAS DISAGREE and ALT DISAGREE alerts and stick shaker activation) resulting from the same underlying failure (for example, erroneous AOA) were not simulated and were not in the stabilizer trim safety assessment report reviewed by the NTSB."
Probably it is more common.
Highly regulated, certificated sector where a single bolt can be dozen time expansive "just" for a FAA approval is an honey jar.
I never understood Mechanical and Electronic parts counterfeits. The amount of effort to create a forgery of a Louis Vuitton bag seems to have so much less effort/payoff ratio than create a fake IC or create parts with low grade steel.
Specially considering that you are risking lives and will most likely be chased for liability versus a fake handbag or whatever other luxury item.
As another example, the amount of scalpers (due to electronics parts shortage) trying to sell fake ICs to suppliers of medical devices is very scary.
Similar with mechanical parts. Quite similar to the real article but with corners cut and verifications skipped.
They're probably building or unknowingly ordering counterfeit parts and naturally those parts pop up elsewhere.
Maybe most of the bolts are made of the right alloy and heat treated correctly, but you're using a crappy furnace with no temperature logging so you don't see that the furnace's temperature dips too low one morning...and you don't test as much of your runs because you cheap out on your QA staff, so you don't catch it.
The computing equivalent would be where how CPUs which fail QA are binned to lower spec (e.g. using 6 cores not 8, or underclocked), except in this instance it’s then still sold as the top-end chip even if it’s unstable and crashes under load sometimes.
> Specially considering that you are risking lives and will most likely be chased for liability
I read an interesting book about this once: Poorly Made in China. Author tells stories of chinese factories manipulating the quality of products such as steel. The factories would gradually reduce the amount of each steel component. They'd use a little bit less iron than they need to, then a little bit less chromium... They'd gradually cut costs by manipulating quality, pocket the difference, become wealthier, all while passing the risk down to their western buyers. Nothing happened immediately, nobody even noticed until some steel scaffolding collapsed, workers fell to their deaths, someone tried to figure out what was going on and noticed the steel chemistry was all over the place.
People sociopathic enough to do stuff like this could not care less about lives or deaths. What matters is rising in life, getting rich. Life, death, safety, risk? Somebody else's problems.
Like if people doesn’t care about killing their coworkers they work with and can see, they sure as shit don’t care about dangerous practices that impact someone they don’t know.
All of the paper work and liability reduces competition and results in much higher prices for literally the same exact part.
Why would they be the same parts? Why would their manufacturer go through extensive testing if they have no incentives in doing so?
Somehow people here seem to believe that “documentation” is expensive, but most of the expense doesn't come from the paperwork itself but from the things that you are required to do by these pieces of paper. And if you want to save costs, you're gonna save costs on the manufacturing process, not just on the paperwork.
If you are buying a replacement part you would want to buy one with the same specs as the part you are replacing.
>Why would their manufacturer go through extensive testing if they have no incentives in doing so?
Manufacturers will test their parts so that buyers can see if the part is usable for their needs.
But without the paper, you cannot know for sure if the spec is the same (you can't see the difference between aviation grade screws and regular screws with naked eyes for instance).
> Manufacturers will test their parts so that buyers can see if the part is usable for their needs.
Manufacturers want to sell their parts, they don't want buyers to “see if the part is usable for their needs” (if the buyer doesn't buy, that's a missed sale).
I mean have you never buy anything? Sellers want you to believe their product is good so you buy it and they make money, that's how it works. And customers being disappointed by false marketing promises is routine stuff, including in the B2B sector.
That’s paperwork and an ink stamp as the only difference.
There are other cases now where NDT is used on high-grade bolts and Heim joints. Parts coming off the same line are sold with a -M suffix (“this bolt was individually magnaflux tested and can go on an aircraft”) or not (“this part can go on a tractor”).
Where no failures are ever found in NDT, I think most practical engineers would agree that the parts are physically identical.
Wait, of course they are identical… unless there is a defect!
But that's the point of testing: when you can tolerate 1% defect then you can just sample your production line, but if your “safety demonstration”[1] relies on the fact that no screw is going to fail catastrophically under load because there's a defect, then you have to check them all. It's not “That’s paperwork and an ink stamp as the only difference”, exhaustive testing vs statistical testing. The work needed for the testing process is actual work, it's not about filling the paperwork.
[1]: not sure this terminology exists in English, I'm just doing a literal translation of a nuclear Engineering concept I know in French only.
Yeah, true.
Stops people from dying though, so who’s to say if it’s good or not.
No.
What do you think “fake” means in this context? That the part is really a Loony Toons sketch of the real thing, stickytaped to the surrounding engine? No, it means it’s essentially an outwardly identical part without the appropriate QA/QC processes undertaken to certify it as genuine and to spec.
This may for example include destructive and nondestructive testing of parts, or it might include tracking the manufacturing process parameters to ensure correct outputs. For example, a cast component has sufficiently low levels of porosity, inclusions, etc. that might in time lead to premature failure. Or it might mean that there wasn’t sufficient record of the brew of the metal going into the casting or the casting process itself to confirm the part has the requisite material properties. In all but the most dire circumstances, it’s nearly impossible to verify whether any of that was done correctly just by looking at the part; for all intents and purposes, it’ll look identical to a real part.
In the case that the OP references regarding Virgin Australia [1], the parts were a low-presssure turbine blade and a high-pressure turbine nozzle seal. Both of them would fall into situations similar to the above. If cast, the turbine blade would need to prove what I outlined, amongst much more. If machined from billet, it’ll still need proof the ingot itself was manufactured correctly which mirrors a lot of the above. In the case of the seal, there’s similar processes to prove that the non-metallic material is to spec so that a Challenger-style failure doesn’t occur, except within expected operating parameters.
The link I provided regarding Virgin Australia gives much more detail about the core issue at play. This isn’t a situation where manufacturer B is stamping its parts as made by manufacturer A. It’s where manufacturer B says it can make a part compliant with the specifications, same as manufacturer A, but then does not have the required documentary evidence that it meets those specifications.
1: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/two-virgin-aircraf...
In the 60s and 70s, there was a lot of crossover between automotive and piston aircraft parts. In particular, Cessna used the same voltage regulator as Ford. Ford used millions of these and Cessna tens of thousands. They were all made on the exact same production line and all got a Ford part number.
Relying on statistical process control, Ford demanded a certain percentage of their parts get extra, manual QC inspection. Cessna demanded 100% inspection of their parts.
Solution: make all the parts on the same line, divert enough for the greater of (Cessna production plus spares) or (Ford’s SPC needs), QC that amount and stamp those inspected parts with a Cessna number (in addition to the Ford part number).
Ford and Cessna can each get parts cheaper than if they were handled separately.
Now, the question comes up: if there are no QC failures detected, are the Ford-only parts as safe as the Ford-or-Cessna parts coming off the line?
They absolutely fly entirely successfully (and legally) on E-AB aircraft (experimental-amateur built) using the same engine/alternator that Cessna uses.
Anyone who has spent time in less developed countries knows what a difference strong government regulations on the market make. People in Western Europe, the US and other developed areas tend to take for granted that the food they buy in the grocery store is what it says on the package. That doesn't just happen by itself, and it's not a safe assumption everywhere.
But just to make it clear… “weeded out of market after the parts fail” involves a billion dollar aircraft with hundreds of humans on it. And just to be more clear, delta is the fourth airline to report these parts.
So when does natural competition start? Because the goal is of course to prevent anyone from getting hurt due to problems that may occur on ~100 jets.
It's kind of disingenuous to dismiss a free-market solution because it is on some level reactive. For all we know, in the absence of government, when planes were invented and accidents started happening, people got together and started doing this on their own.
Sure we could argue "something something greedy profits", but even then, we have to assume action on the part of consumers, companies, intermediaries, etc. It's a valid business model to provide a "certification" service, and there are many examples out there of just such a thing if you squint.
Further, we really can't discount the "laziness" and "apathy" that is caused by over-reliance on government and what it purports to do.
Waiting for enough plane crashes that customers demand certification through a free market process might work but will certainly result in more deaths. More deaths is basically the thing society decided governments should stop.
> For all we know, in the absence of government, when planes were invented and accidents started happening, people got together and started doing this on their own.
Thousands of people had to die until we arrived at the regulation we have today. As the saying goes, every rule is written in blood.
If you just keep making rules you end up like Europe.
But there are MANY nuances: 1. Are you making sure everything you value is being priced in? For example, a free market will find you a very efficient price for an assassin to get rid of your spouse. But without external regulation it won’t factor in whether or not getting rid of your spouse is actually a good thing for society or not.
2. Is all the information available to all participants? This is extremely difficult to achieve and in a sense the entire financial system is a hundreds of billions of dollar industry whose goal is to improve information transparency marginally.
3. The word “free” doesn’t mean what a lot of the people who go on and on about “free” markets think it means. It means markets where information is freely available and buyers and sellers can participate freely. The “free market” propagandists, on the other hand, insist free means free from government regulation, when in fact to achieve a real free market where buyers and sellers can bid freely and information is easily available to all, regulation is a prerequisite. And in a democracy the regulation is likely to be government regulation.
if it's not going to improve the stock price the who cares?
source: worked for a lot of very large, healthy F500 companies that were clusterfucks most of the time
Likewise with the messy spacex launch… regulation is happening in response.
That's the thinking of bureocrats who see the world in terms of rules and enforce, but fail to see the bigger picture that it's easier for everyone to just relax the rules.
Capitalism is buyer, seller, and marketplace, with "enough" regulatory feedback to stabilize the system.
Regulation becomes a bugaboo when too many people make their living stomping on the brakes to keep everything tidy.
Regulation is a "Goldilocks" challenge.
But at the end of the day, both extremes are not helpful so we should be promoting regulatory balance not extremist positions.
> with "enough" regulatory feedback
that seemed to meet with disfavor.
Capitalism is “a small elite possess the means of production”, what you are describing is “market economy”, those two concepts have been muddled by cold war propaganda but they aren't the same thing.
Crony capitalism, monopolies and regulatory captures are all features of Capitalism, but they work against the goals of a market economy.
(also, given many of today's restaurant and shop are independent vs subsidiaries of global corporations, this argument is a little bit obsolete).
Also, the mods seem testy on this thread.
Rejecting their wisdom leads to the economic cratering we see about us.
A fantastic game is talked, but Emmanuel Goldstien always manages to tube things. Always...
I've seen a lot of dystopian capitalist thinking and reasoning on here over the years, particularly recently with self driving vehicles and ML regulation. A large proportion of users wish to get away with what the hell they like at whatever cost to society that may have as long as they get their VC funding. This peaked recently in a discussion about acceptable deaths in self driving vehicles, the comments of which made me seriously worry about my fellow citizens.
The article here is a peek into a scenario which has been proven to occur when that mindset is acceptable and normalised. I can see a VC backing a second source market of unregulated aircraft parts and the justification of the corners cut because quite frankly a lot of people have no idea what they are doing and don't care about the consequences as long as the cargo cult has good marketing.
This is backed up by some of the comments on this thread being a shit show. Perhaps the guidelines should regulate opinion a little better rather than comment brevity. Or HN ends up like X.
Notably you can tell how healthy a community is when someone signs up a throwaway account to make a comment reminding people of the rules.
A thorough, sober investigation of the facts should be done before attempting to attribute motivations, and maybe not even then. What truly matters is the outcome; was anyone hurt? were the uncertified parts found? is the system working to keep people safe?
The motivations of the airline come in a distant second to those.
Maybe a previous lurker specifically made an account so they could post on your comment?
Any properly working oversight that wasn't heavy influenced by conflicts of interest between the FAA and Boeing would have prevent the second plane from flying.
The first crash was an accident that could have been prevented the second is proof of what de-regulation and "free market capitalism" looks like.
I mean, I've been in medical instruments rather than aviation, and so I've been under the FDA rather than the FAA, but I suspect the level is the same or higher for airlines.
Airlines do safety checking because they don't want their customers to die. That's bad for business.
Your statement is a strawman.
And it would appear your using that as an argument than more regulation is good and that all existing regulations are optimal.
Seems like a very weak argument overall.
We do have regulations, even quite strict ones in this case, yet it happened. Making already highly illegal actions more illegal is hardly going to help.
I do get that you dislike deregulation, but this comment completely misses the topic at hand.
Regulation isn't stiffer penalties alone, it's oversight.
If I have to pass 2 checks vs 1, the incentive to fuck around decreases.
[0] "Excessive certification requirements made parts far too expensive, which made people willing to take the risk on counterfeit parts." - Note that I do not think we should deregulate aircraft parts, but this would be a valid point.
Then we get things like the Horizon Deep oil spill.
No, it doesn’t.
Greater regulation happens more often with regulatory capture, because then the purpose of regulation is creating barriers to entry.
What is left out here: How regulation mandated quality standards and reduced the supply of substandard parts (so low they're headline making outliers)
There was other Gov interference that brought us here: "AOG last month was ordered by a London judge to hand over records to help identify additional suspect parts"
epilogue: Both major biz and major Govs harmfully prioritize their desires above public wellbeing. Of the two, however, only Gov has a built-in duty to care for the public. One result of that is that Gov abuses are recognized as failures to be corrected - while Biz abuses are commonly regarded as successes to be rewarded and amplified.
Ever.
Please don't strawman here, or I'll have to call you a Redditor.
It matters who and what you're regulating. I generally believe most laws and regulations should apply directly to corporations and governments in order to check their power. The activity of individuals shouldn't need much regulation beyond a basic framework for civilized society.
Someone unlawfully ignoring exist regulation does not make a great argument for more regulation...
(Though in this case the parts were found before anyone was hurt/killed!)
Here in India the best bet is to do all the illegal shoddy things one can do and to cover up, just pay the local police station and any "inspector" from the govt who comes knocking.
That official only says " I am satisfied by the documents and information presented before me" which is an euphemism for a bribe. Everyone knows it and doesn't really care.
India is HUGE and as they say "ya Sab chalta hai" or in english "everything works here".
If some airline bought 50 year old planes and started flying them, people will use it because it would be cheaper.
The crucial difference from train jumping off the rails its that there can in theory be survivors. Also, the train won't start to burn out and it's usually possible to salvage a lot of the equipment.
And before pointing any fingers, remember NYT cheering for the Iraq War...
https://globalnews.ca/news/10002281/westjet-engine-unapprove...
So less than 21. Let's say 10. I'm willing to bet an obscene amount of money that if 10 of their planes drop out of they sky that it would tank their business.
> Delta is fourth major U.S. airline to find fake jet aircraft engine parts
or
> Delta is fourth major U.S. airline to find fake jet aircraft engine parts
Is it worse that at least four major airlines have detected this problem, or, is it worse that this seems to suggest that there may be significantly higher numbers of minor airlines that have discovered this? The article itself didn't really seem to clarify on specifics, but instead outlined towards the end which other airlines have discovered the same problem.
They’re engine parts, not blender parts shoved into a jet engine. They may be uncertified, they may be counterfeit but they are in no way “fake”.
https://parabolicarc.com/2015/07/20/spacex-statement-loss-fa...
https://www.aeroflap.com.br/en/fake-helicopter-factory-locat...
The crackdown on this was more about protecting profit margins of other helicopter factories, not a concern about "fake aircraft"
1 - as far as we know publicly, Embraer didn't have multiple quality control issues around critical components in multiple different aircraft designs (737 Max aft pressure bulkheads, wings and lack of redundancy and training resulting in 300+ deaths; 787 general poor quality when coming from South Carolina).
Seriously though, why Russia?
UPD: thinking again, there’s a large supplier in Russia who lost contracts with Boeing and other customers after the war started. They should have some specs and established manufacturing processes. But it will be trivial to establish the link if it were them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSMPO-AVISMA
Counterfeits and low grade steel fake parts have been a thing in aviation for a very long time. It has always been up to QA and regulatory to keep you and I safe.
No point in thinking of this as part of some subversive war, greed is more than enough to explain it.