14 ms·
Delta finds fake jet aircraft engine parts with forged airworthiness documents
- mrep8 3y agoThis is a made up company so they can blame someone else of their shady behavior.
- jimnotgym 3y ago"What we need is less regulation" source, UK government, HN comments, etc
- lrem 3y agoWhat good is regulation without solid enforcement?
- colechristensen 3y agoThis is what is happening. Likewise with the messy spacex launch… regulation is happening in response.
- kortilla 3y agoThat’s not the same thing at all. Fraud isn’t something that needs new regulation. The existing rules are fine, they need to be enforced.
- frankreyes 3y agoWe need new rules that improve enforcement. And then enforce the enforcement with rules about enforcing enforcement!1 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.
- olliej 3y agoThat only works if you don’t have targeted defunding of regulatory bodies - that’s what a lot of these come down to in many countries now. People vote for laws that protect them, then anti-actual-person politicians vote to defund the agencies enforcing those regulations. It’s win win for them: they get to give their friends and employers tax cuts and lower operating costs (by socializing the downstream costs), and because the agencies are under funded they slow down which feeds into “these agencies are bad because they’re slow and inefficient, so we should end them completely”
- smitty1e 3y agoDing ding ding. 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.
- baz00 3y agoRegulation is there to make sure you don't do things that damage society or hurt people. If someone stomps on you, you're probably doing things to damage society or hurt people. Stop doing that.
- smitty1e 3y ago...unless and until it ventures into https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
- PM_me_your_math 3y ago[dead]
- loa_in_ 3y agoRegulation is done, ideally, with the reality of the society in mind and up to date with the zeitgeist at all times. In practice there's a lot of room for improvement in this regard.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago“Free markets are efficient”
- jacknews 3y agoRight, the fake parts suppliers will get weeded out of the market by natural competition after a few parts fail...
- lostlogin 3y agoI wonder what Amazon would say about this, if an unfiltered comment were possible.
- lamontcg 3y agoXEUWU jackscrew assembly horizontal stabilizer trim system OVERALL PICK (highly rated, well-priced and available to ship immediately), 14% off.
- pjerem 3y agoWith a picture of a flying plane side by side with a crashed plane : "ours / theirs".
- oblio 3y ago4.2 stars out of 5 (20 reviews), a few 5 star reviews mentioning how cool the box looked and how easy it was to open and a 1 star review at the bottom with a detailed explanation how the part is made of shoddy material and after being installed everyone died.
- plagiarist 3y agoThe five star reviews are all about the comfort level of a pair of socks from before the listing was changed into an industrial part.
- 3y ago
- H8crilA 3y agoNext to noone wants less regulation in aviation. Please, no splitting.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- almostnormal 3y agoThose few "next to noone" are just only almost everyone in general aviation in Europe.
- H8crilA 3y agoShould have written "commercial transport aviation". My bad.
- thinkerswell 3y agoThis is a low content post meant to inflame. Please respect the HN guidelines.
- baz00 3y agoFirstly, it's accurate. Secondly, no community should be beyond criticism, guidelines or not. Thirdly, I'll extrapolate on the comment because it hits hard for me. 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.
- tankenmate 3y agoSure, the article is good, but the "assertion" based on of motivations based on what someone didn't say is hardly what you'd call a sound investigation or valid criticism. If court cases were decided in a similar fashion to the OP's comments then courts would turn into a shouting match. 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.
- Aeolun 3y ago> 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. Maybe a previous lurker specifically made an account so they could post on your comment?
- sschueller 3y agoTell that to the 346 people that died on Boeing 737 Max flights. 157 of which died in the second plane that crashed with the same issue after it was decided it would be too expensive to ground all aircraft of this type.
- selfmodruntime 3y agoThis is a disingenuous argument because it does not respect all the millions of plane passengers who didn't die. You're also mixing up failing hardware parts with failing software, a subject that is famously underregulated in commercial aircraft.
- tsukikage 3y agoConsider: an argument that boils down to "MOST planes didn't fall out of the sky, it's probably fine" might perhaps not be as persuasive as one first imagines.
- sschueller 3y agoThese people didn't die in a freak accident of an unknown issue. The issue was know, it was engineered around using software, corners were cut left and right and then even after one crashed it was not taken out of service. 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.
- lm28469 3y agoNah mate the invisible hand of the free market, which is very akin to a god or a children's book fairy will automagically take care of it, that's if you believe hard enough
- MrBuddyCasino 3y agoThis is simply law enforcement, committing a crime by selling forged parts is mostly orthogonal to the level of regulation of said part. You can combine supply chain verification mechanisms such as certificates of authenticity with any level of formal technical regulation of the affected parts.
- HPsquared 3y agoYep.. contracts, civil court, etc. Insurance companies have a regulatory function as well. Government regulations should be the absolute backstop.
- nvm0n2 3y agoThis problem was found by the airlines, not by regulators, so what's the relevance?
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoAirlines have people checking this stuff because of regulations. That's part of the regulations - that you have a compliance department (or several), and you get audited regularly for compliance, and the auditors can ask anything, and you'd better be able to answer, and to prove your answers. Part of the point of regulation is that you start looking, and keep looking, persistently and systematically. You don't just wait for the regulator to find it. 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.
- nvm0n2 3y agoNo, the problem was found during "engine work by a third party", so they weren't checking it because of regulations. It was noticed during routine maintenance. Airlines do safety checking because they don't want their customers to die. That's bad for business.
- refurb 3y agoI don’t recall reading any HN comments that the regulations that should be eliminated had to do with aircraft parts. 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.
- Sebb767 3y ago> "What we need is less regulation" source, UK government, HN comments, etc 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.
- radiorental 3y ago> Making already highly illegal actions more illegal. Regulation isn't stiffer penalties alone, it's oversight. If I have to pass 2 checks vs 1, the incentive to fuck around decreases.
- xcdzvyn 3y agoHonestly, I think they know that and just don't care.
- jimnotgym 3y agoBut all of the regulating agencies are defunded, so enforcement is a joke. This is the right wing approach to deregulation by stealth
- Sebb767 3y agoI'm not trying to argue against regulation. I just find it rather strange to have this dig against people calling for deregulation when, in this particular case, nobody asked for deregulation and the incident could, at best, be construed as a weak argument against regulation [0]. [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.
- RyanAdamas 3y agoRegulatory capture happens more often with greater regulation. More regulation = more funding required = more labor needed to perform; more money, more labor demand = more political power; money funnels into those managing agencies through third party avenues as a means of buying power and before you know it the regulation is just another barrier to entry that allow existing corporations (often the ones who craft the regulation) to consolidate their industry. Then we get things like the Horizon Deep oil spill.
- HPsquared 3y agoQuality over quantity.
- PM_me_your_math 3y ago[dead]
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoI run in pretty right-wing circles and have never, in my life, heard someone say this about civil or commercial aviation. Ever. Please don't strawman here, or I'll have to call you a Redditor.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoDepends. I want less than zero regulation when it comes to speech and civilian cryptography use. When it comes to aircraft though, the existing regulations aren't strict enough. 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.
- pxmpxm 3y agoTwitter edge-lord level of dumb; is the idea there to make make forgery double-extra fraudulent and super-duper illegal? Someone unlawfully ignoring exist regulation does not make a great argument for more regulation...
- s17tnet 3y agoAnecdtoal, my retired relative worked in civil avio jet engine industry and they got reports like that since mid-00. 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.
- DoingIsLearning 3y agoIs it though? 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.
- inferiorhuman 3y agoMy understanding is that these are genuine parts that are past their service life respiffed to look usable. So it's more like the documentation is counterfeit than the part itself.
- colechristensen 3y agoThey’re often “real” ICs from the same factory selling QA rejects or running the factory over night with loose quality control and verification. Similar with mechanical parts. Quite similar to the real article but with corners cut and verifications skipped.
- KeplerBoy 3y agoJust think of russian aviation. They're effectively banned from buying spare parts directly from the manufacturers and they don't care about certificates as much as they are banned from flying to western nations anyways. They're probably building or unknowingly ordering counterfeit parts and naturally those parts pop up elsewhere.
- neom 3y agoSame issue that happened to WestJet in Canada: https://globalnews.ca/news/10002281/westjet-engine-unapproved-parts/ https://globalnews.ca/news/10002281/westjet-engine-unapprove...
- Almondsetat 3y agoCould Russia be behind this? Stealing parts for their fleet and switching them for fakes with forged documents for the west?
- shwaj 3y agoI think it’s probably North Korea. Or maybe Antarctica. Seriously though, why Russia?
- ivan_gammel 3y agoNot impossible, but I’d rather vote for those parts being manufactured in China and the operations being run by some criminal syndicate. There’s a lot of work to make those parts look like originals and it is not a one year project, so it is unlikely that sanctions caused it. 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSMPO-AVISMA
- colechristensen 3y agoOrdinary greed and sloppiness are much more likely. You don’t need conspiracy when you have greed and irresponsibility.
- Almondsetat 3y agoSo the fact that Russia is under sanctions and cannot legally get spare parts for its fleet is a conspiracy now?
- 2Gkashmiri 3y agoThere must be an amazing markup on these fake parts otherwise why bother? 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.
- julienfr112 3y agoThere is no commercial jet build in India, and if there where, no one from India would agree to board them.
- 2Gkashmiri 3y agoCorrect. But then again, you don't know the power of the government. Media is paid for and controlled by them to a much wider and expansive degree that they can essentially spin any feel good patriotic story to drum up support. 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.
- samus 3y agoNo matter media control, a high incidence of accidents will be noticed because each plane falling from the skies contains hundreds of people, which is very visible and impactful. Also, planes are still expensive equipment. 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.
- elromulous 3y agoHold up, the government controls the media in India? So much for being the "largest democracy".
- 3y ago
- jedc 3y agoSounds like the plot of Michael Crichton's book "Airframe" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airframe_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airframe_(novel) (Though in this case the parts were found before anyone was hurt/killed!)
- jimbob45 3y ago+1 for that book. I’m surprised no one has yet tried to work it into a movie or at least a made-for-TV movie.
- maxcan 3y agoIIRC (its been decades I think) that book was pretty critical of the unions working at the plant. Good luck getting that made in today's environment.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agoI feel that way about many of Michael Crichtons books.
- yellow_lead 3y ago> 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."
- tjoff 3y ago> That they won't say means the parts were used in service. Or they don't know.
- RockRobotRock 3y agoFeel like the traceability of those things would be really good. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit.
- punkybr3wster 3y agoThey were probably a good deal at .27c on TEMU.
- Prickle 3y agoGoing to link an aircrash investigation that found fake aircraft parts as the cause. 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-crash-of-partnair-flight-394-f8a752f663f8 https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/riven-by-deceit-the-cras...
- cfn 3y agoVery long article but well worth the read. Scary stuff: "...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."
- bboygravity 3y agoSo either unapproved parts are of very high quality or airlines have been extremely lucky so far?
- hef19898 3y agoA combination of both, aerospace is so safe, the edge cases and tiniest margins matter. Good quality parts of the non-flying variety are often good enough, they just aren't good enough all the time. Nor are they traceable. So luck, that the parts don't fail in cataszrophic fashion. And even bad quality "flying" parts are usually reasonable high quality, after all the folks handling the real parts on a daily basis have to be fooled as well.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoAll of the above. Parts may be real / legit parts that exceeded their official lifespan, or "3rd shift" parts made at the same factory with mostly or entirely the same materials, just not run through QA to save money and given fake testing certifications. 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.
- dizzydes 3y agoThis is big, like people involved need to go to prison big.
- highwayman47 3y agoA lot of US airlines fly their planes down to South America for maintenance. I assume this is related to the parts.
- petesergeant 3y agoPerhaps, but Brazil certainly has an excellent aerospace industry. Meanwhile, here's a UK-based distributor selling unverified parts from two weeks ago: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/engine-maker-cfm-says-up-96-planes-affected-by-fake-parts-probe-2023-09-20/ https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/engine-ma...
- sofixa 3y agoWhy would you assume so? Embraer are a top 3 airliner manufacturer in the world, with better quality than even Boeing[1], an American darling. And as the article indicates, it was a UK-based company which is the origin of the fake parts. 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).
- fredgrott 3y agoAre aircraft parts using the same cert infrastructure that submarines use?
- ranting-moth 3y ago>Those engines account for less than 1% of the more than 2,100 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.
- sojournerc 3y agoto be slightly pedantic... commercial airliners are designed to operate on one engine if necessary. Engine failure does not result in dropping out of the sky.
- Zigurd 3y agoSafety margins, like those for rules that allow two engine airliners to cross oceans, depend on two engines that are not challenged by fake parts. If you undermine those rules, people will die.
- nickdothutton 3y agoTrafficking/laundering fake aircraft parts out (possibly mixed in with genuine articles) is hugely profitable. There was a major scandal about this many years ago when the USAF found several quite sophisticated parts (not just nuts and bolts) were in fact counterfeit. Edited for typo.
- jeffrallen 3y agoThe AS 9100 standard (which is an aviation-specialized version of ISO 9001) has specific standards about training people to catch suspect parts, launching investigations, and clearing the suspect parts out of the supply chain. Interestingly, AS 9100 requires that you DO NOT return the counterfeit parts to the supplier, but destroy them yourself, to avoid that they get resent to some other customer.
- kmbfjr 3y agoCan we just stop using the word “fake”? 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”.
- Zigurd 3y agoIf by that you mean they look real, OK. But a part as simple as a fastener with a fake rating is as fake as a $3 bill. It will fail when the real part will not.
- M95D 3y agoFake parts? How about fake entire aircraft? https://www.aeroflap.com.br/en/fake-helicopter-factory-located-in-a-small-country-in-eastern-europe/ https://www.aeroflap.com.br/en/fake-helicopter-factory-locat...
- sidewndr46 3y agoIf you read that, the aircraft in question aren't fake. They just aren't assembled in Kamov's original factory. They somehow managed to get enough parts and enough assembly line knowledge (probably from reading the service manual) to assemble their own. The crackdown on this was more about protecting profit margins of other helicopter factories, not a concern about "fake aircraft"
- M95D 3y agoWithout original factory quality control, it's the same as a complete fake to me.
- TomK32 3y agoCouldn't we (Europeans) just push fake and faulty parts to where-ever Russia is buying parts to avoid sanctions?
- thathndude 3y agoSeems to me that stuff like this is the single, biggest reason why we should try to return as much manufacturing as possible to America.
- Zigurd 3y agoThe weak link here is likely to be what the article calls "maintenance providers." Offshore maintenance, out of the reach of regulators and inspectors. They have perverse incentives for cost saving, some of which could be quite compelling if they have entered into fixed-bid contracts and the airline isn't doing anything to make up for looser oversight.
- registeredcorn 3y agoI'm not sure which worries me more > 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.
- sidewndr46 3y agoYou'd have to read some incident reports to get to the truth of it, but from what I've been told aviation mechanics routinely get handed fake parts to install. But they are caught right then and there and never placed on the aircraft.
- belter 3y agoSpacex lost a Falcon 9 due to pieces not following certificate performance. https://parabolicarc.com/2015/07/20/spacex-statement-loss-falcon/ https://parabolicarc.com/2015/07/20/spacex-statement-loss-fa...
- callalex 3y agoThis article doesn’t mention anything about arrests and prison time. Is that because this article has a narrow focus, or are those responsible really still walking free?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]