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Comment by yellow_lead | Hacker News Reader

> Delta would not say if the engines with the fraudulently documented parts had been on planes while they were in service.

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."

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> 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.

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.

So your lack of cynicism here is because you have knowledge of their internal processes and not because you are logically concluding companies would prefer to be vague over risking the need to backtrack later.

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.

I don't lack the cynicism. I just temper it with the knowledge that it is possible, however unlikely, that they aren't being completely disingenuous arseholes 100% of the time.

Accepting a more generous explanation could be true doesn't mean I'm going to believe it actually is without further evidence!

I'm pretty much on the same page as you with this!

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.

Your generous explanation seems to run counter to the first part of the second quote, which is that none of Delta’s aircraft are currently flying with unapproved parts. Why would your explanation be true for the first quote and not the second, which is much more directly problematic if false?

I suppose 1 could be true and 2 false, but that seems less likely

Approved could mean by their supplier right? So they might still be fake, but someone approved them.

Often what is “approved” and “delivered” conflict. In this case, they approved a part, a genuine part, but got a fake part, unbeknownst to them at the time.

One could say the fake part was not “approved”.

It's easier to verify what's currently in use than what has ever been in use. I know I'm not holding any radioactive monkey wrenches right now. To be sure I've never held one will require some investigation.

Having seen the parts tracking system of a european helicopter manufacturer: They had the most insanely detailed parts tracking system (including certa for every part and sub-assembly and supplier) I have ever seen. I would be surprised if it takes them a lot of effort to figure out which planes are affected.

Yes and no. In case engine maintenance isnoutsourced, which it often is, the necessary information might not be available to Delta, or any other operator / airline, right away.

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.

> Unfortunately, there is nothing Delta and other Airlines could 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?

If it was the same supplier, AOG Technologies, there isn't reallyuch an airline or direct customer of AOGs could heve done.

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.

Wholeheartedly disagree they there is nothing they could have done.

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.

From https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/oct/5/airlines-gro...:

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.

“Hey, Boeing, have you heard of these guys?”

I know there’s a chain of custody for hardware parts on commercial airplanes. What I don’t know is if anyone/everyone has a fully digital version or if it’s still a literal paper trail.

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.

I think the statements are in perfect agreement and the cynical conclusion is correct.

> 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.

They probably had to trace all the certs for every certified part in their engines, and found 21 where the paperwork was suspect.

> That they won't say means the parts were used in service.

Or they don't know.

Feel like the traceability of those things would be really good. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit.

It is really good. That's how they found out.

I worked in one, and currently work in another, company that makes such tracking tools and I can say that we keep track of a lot of things, from tobacco to the screws that hold the turbine blades. Everything is tracked.

Why and how do you track tobacco? Is that a typo?

https://health.ec.europa.eu/tobacco/product-regulation/syste...

> to address the issue of illicit trade

Oh I was only thinking in an aerospace context. That makes sense.

In the context of space travel, or spaced out travel, that's not tobacco you'd need.

Never worked on stuff getting into peoples boddies, but the reason propably is that yes, people inhale it. Hence the tracking, after all chips have lot numbers printed on the packaging.

For food items it is usually in case something is wrong with it making people sick they can issue a recall.

Or it's barely working and they found the 21 easiest-to-find examples out of an unknown quantity.

The time-on-wing before overhaul advertised for the CFM56 is 10'000 hours.

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.

Traceability always has its blind spots. Even in my experience in medical devices there's been issues with manufacturers who swap components out for what they considered to be equivalent components, and sensor manufacturers that change their components without informing the customers because they considered the functionality to be identical (spoilers, it wasn't)

Maybe. Also concerning

They know. This isn't like a car. Everything is traced.

Just because they have the information does not mean it is readily available in a form which will answer a question. Parts currently in service is probably something they have regular use for and is easy to access. Figuring out the complete history of a part probably takes quite a bit longer and is not a frequent use. Throw in several parts and I can believe they aren't ready to commit to an answer.

everything is traced.

...but we are talking about forged documents. How can we sure the trace records are not forged?

Cross checking take time

It seems AOG Technics operated by falsifying part manifests using the names of accredited suppliers: https://fortune.com/2023/09/22/why-so-many-flights-canceled-...

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.

> 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.

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.

Regarding the second, I don’t think we need every company statement to be even more littered with weasely “to the best of our knowledge” and “as far as we know” language. Anything they say should be assumed to be good faith, best of knowledge, and with the understanding that it’s always possible for new information to come to light.

It's possible they don't know yet. The blowback might be intense if they categorically denied having the undocumented parts on an operating aircraft and then had to walk that back, especially in an industry like air travel which is hyper-competitive and depends on customer trust.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

It's more likely that they haven't checked every single plane yet to be able to say either way.

This is incorrect. As soon as one incident was found, they would have had to ground the fleet until they had checked all the rest of the planes.

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.

This is very obviously not the case.

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.

Which is why they were able to assert that no planes were currently flying with them.

But have any of the fleet ever flown with them in the past? Much harder question which likely will take some time to correlate.

Delta has not grounded their fleet, and if it had this would have been widely reported. I don't understand why you would state that so confidently.

Read the statement. They said that they have confirmed there are no active flights with unapproved parts, so no need to ground the flights.

It says they couldn't say if there had been any flights previously in service with unapproved parts.

I don't think it's possible to say. All we know is that fake parts are in circulation.

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.

The best way to be sure is to fly in planes used by the US military. They don’t fuck around with their supply chains.

But then again, they also buy direct from factory and keep parts on hand for decades.

No ide how it is in the US military, but the military supply chains I know face the risk of having obsolete parts, parts not being compatible with certain aircraft configurations, reused parts, used and damaged spare parts... And, in case of civilian hardware (e.g. AWACS engines, Poseidon aircraft...) also counterfeits.

and also pay insane rates for otherwise basic, market-rate parts. and most of them probably don't need to be ultra high grade.

Counterfeit parts are everywhere, including US military. https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2022/09/13...

A fraudulently approved part is still an approved part until it's detected.

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.

They might know who supplied them and when.

They absolutely know who supplied them and when, there is certificates for all hardware on these planes.

That, and tracking goes all the way to the original manufacturer.

To make an undetectable forgery would require faking all documentation right up to the original manufacturer.

That they don't say makes them look worse.

In the minds of smart people, yes. But most people don't think that way - they don't go through the possibilities to realize this.

Baseless speculation.

It's not baseless, it's logical. There is a huge incentive for Delta to state "customers can rest assured they were never installed on planes". There is no possibility that they don't know since they're required by law to document use and location of all parts and tools they use for maintenance.

The OP's assertion lacks foundation, and hence can correctly be classified as "baseless". If the OP has proof then they should come forward with it; if the OP lacks proof then ipso facto it is "baseless".

The foundation is the information in the article.

Saying it has no foundation, ipso facto it is baseless, is just laundering your subjective opinion to make it sound objective.

You are confusing "no base" with "no evidence". A basis can also be logical support. And OP has outlined the logical (decision theoretical) foundations of their reasoning pretty clearly.

Message to Delta...Before maintenance on your airplanes..Check your suppliers Google Maps reviews...

https://www.google.com/maps/place/AOG+Technics/@51.497673,-0...

I suspect that some of the reviews may not be completely accurate.

"I asked for a flux capacitor but received a food processor instead. But it does make good guacamole."

It’s more credible than ordering a food processor and getting a flux capacitor?

That supplier appears to have had zero reviews on Google prior to this making the news; they're all either clear trolls or clearly referencing the fake parts scandal. Checking wouldn't have revealed the issue.

Most are trolling, but Delta spokesperson confirmed it last Monday according to article. Article is from Tuesday. Looks like there is at least one review from 4 weeks ago saying... "Famous purveyor of counterfeit parts."

If you read the article, you'll notice this:

> 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...

Approval != safe. Some authentic parts break, some inauthentic parts don't. There is probably a correlation, but it's not immediately clear what it is in most let alone all circumstances.

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.

Authentic parts are appropriately tested, have known tested failure modes and well understood lifespans that are built into maintenance schedules. If a fake part fails outside of the known failure scenarios there is a cost in investigating that issue and resolving it even if the failure is not catastrophic.

This is a bad take. “Real” parts are known. Real parts are tested, and their failure modes are understood in relation to each other. Yea you can get lucky on a fake or a bad apple on a real one but that’s just luck. The story surely would be “delta accidentally has been buying a superior part” if the parts were more reliable.

> 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?

> 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.

> Could be refurbished or used parts

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.

> That is inferior to new, considering physical goods have a limited mechanical lifespan.

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.

That isn’t any better. Mechanical parts have finite lifetimes for a reason. If a part is known to develop stress fractures after 5000 hours, it may have be required to replace that part after 3000 hours, even if there are no visible signs of wear at that point. If that part is then re-sold as new with a forged history, that’s a problem.

You’re right, it’s not better. That’s why I didn’t say it was. I’m just offering another possible motivation.

If itnis the same UK based company, we do know: criminal fraud and intentionally selling counterfeit parts.

> Why would anyone do that unless the part was inferior?

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.)

> and their failure modes are understood in relation to each other.

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.

If anything, the past years has demonstrated that crashes are now caused by "certified software upgrade" (I’m refering to the 737-MAX fiasco)

> Some authentic parts break, some inauthentic parts don't.

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.

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