Transportation
Forged documents for aircraft parts went undetected for years, report says
Report finds that dependence on paper, lack of information sharing hampered efforts to keep unapproved airplane parts out of the aviation ecosystem.


A TAP Air Portugal aircraft takes off from Dublin Airport in 2021. (Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters)

By Lori Aratani
October 9, 2024 at 5:59 p.m. EDT

In June 2023, a keen-eyed employee at TAP Air Portugal spotted a discrepancy: Parts for an airplane engine didn’t seem to match the paperwork. The employee contacted the manufacturer, Safran, which quickly determined the documents had been falsified, setting off a worldwide scramble to identify and track thousands of suspect components. … The investigation later determined that fewer than 1 percent of the Safran engines were affected, but the incident underscored the challenge of ferreting out fraud in an airliner manufacturing supply chain that is dependent on a sprawling global network of companies.

Details of the case over parts supplied by London-based AOG Technics were contained in a report published Wednesday by an industry group analyzing the broader problems revealed by the episode. The group, the Aviation Supply Chain Integrity Coalition, released recommendations to tighten up procedures to prevent unapproved parts from making their way onto commercial aircraft.

“We want to make sure this never happens again,” said John Porcari, former deputy secretary at the U.S. Transportation Department, who, along with Robert L. Sumwalt, former chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, co-chairs the coalition. “This is about getting ahead of the curve.”

The coalition’s 48-page report found that despite efforts to modernize, the system for tracking and verifying the integrity of airplane parts remains heavily dependent on the expertise of individuals and on paper documents.

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Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report

By Lori Aratani
Lori Aratani writes about transportation issues, including how people get around -- or don't. Her beat includes airlines and airports, as well as the agencies that oversee them.follow on X @loriara