How an alleged scammer sold fake airplane parts to United, Delta, and more — and fooled a whole industry
Oct 14, 2023, 02:45 IST
- Distributor AOG Technics is accused of a years-long scheme of selling fake aircraft parts to airlines.
- Major US airlines say they found bogus components sourced from the company on their CFM56 engines.
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Global airlines have been flying with fake engine parts for years — and the industry is just now finding out.
Earlier this year, a routine inspection of the world's best-selling jet engine uncovered an alarming scheme involving a London distributor called AOG Technics.
The plot was uncovered at TAP Air Portugal's maintenance subsidiary in June when engineers noticed one of the "new" spare parts for a CFM56 engine appeared older than what the paperwork indicated, Bloomberg reported. Workers flagged the inconsistency to French manufacturer Safran, which co-produces the CFM56 with General Electric as a 50/50 joint venture called CFM International. The engine is used on Airbus and Boeing planes.Safran confirmed the fraudulent documentation, launching an investigation that found thousands of parts across at least 126 CFM56 engines were sold without a legitimate airworthiness certificate.The European Union Aviation Safety Agency confirmed the bogus parts in an August regulatory filing. The agency quickly warned operators, shops, and distributors to check their records of CFM56 parts supplied from AOG and remove any in use.Carriers including United, Southwest, Delta, and American have all since identified illegitimate parts flying on their passenger jetliners.American, Delta, and Southwest told Insider that a small number of aircraft contained the falsified parts, and each has been taken out of service for replacement. United confirmed the same in September after revealing it found fake parts on its planes.CFM itself also fell victim to the plot after buying parts from AOG indirectly and using them on its engines, according to Reuters.The engine maker filed a lawsuit against AOG in September, and the distributor has since submitted documents detailing its sales history after being ordered to by a London judge, according to the Wall Street Journal.An attorney for CFM International told Reuters that AOG Technics had created a "deliberate, dishonest, and sophisticated scheme to deceive the market with falsified documents on an industrial scale."None of the AOG-supplied parts have a strict lifespan in which they must be replaced after a certain number of flights, Bloomberg reported. But the scandal could potentially impact safety as it's impossible to know how uncertified parts will hold up in extreme conditions.For example, uncertified bolts and brackets caused a Convair CV-580 turboprop to crash in Europe in 1989, killing 55 people.