Escalating scandal grips airlines including American and Southwest, as nearly 100 planes find fake parts from company with fake employees that vanished overnight
(fortune.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 24 Sep 2023 02:00
https://lemmy.world/post/5620660
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 24 Sep 2023 02:00
https://lemmy.world/post/5620660
Escalating scandal grips airlines including American and Southwest, as nearly 100 planes find fake parts from company with fake employees that vanished overnight::Why are so many flights getting canceled or delayed? Blame a mysterious British supplier accused of falsified documents for plane components.
threaded - newest
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It has had two consecutive summers plagued with seemingly constant flight delays and cancellations as “revenge travel” grips a worldwide public eager to get out after a pandemic-era hibernation.
Instead these parts “get sold cheaply to customers who need inexpensive replacements.” Black market dealings can be slightly more nefarious in nature, often entailing sale of military technology to countries that are under international sanctions, such as selling spare F-14 fighter jets to Iran.
In addition to allegedly forging documents for airplane parts it appears that AOG Technics created several fake LinkedIn profiles claiming to be company executives, according to Bloomberg.
Several of the filings are riddled with typos, including misspelled executive titles and oddly capitalized words that appear to have happened when someone hit caps lock instead of the “A” key.
Other documents show a series of shifting corporate addresses, some of which end up back at either a coworking space in London and the offices of a now-retired accountant in a sleepy West Sussex town.
A Certificate of Incorporation filed with the Registrar of Companies for England and Wales in January 2021 listed Kensho’s headquarters at the same London address of AOG Technics—the North Nova building just a few blocks from Buckingham Palace.
The original article contains 1,523 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 87%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Which just goes to show, if you’re gonna type in fraudulent things, get a keyboard with no caps-lock key.
Well that is scary!
My father has been designing and building bespoke aircraft for 45 years, was an FAA test pilot, inspector, and trainer for most of that time, and was in the US Air Force during the Korean War. He has more aviation experience than most.
His license plate reads GO RAIL and he won’t fly commercial if he can avoid it.
e: I am not surprised.
The FRA (federal railway administration) is scary. I would trust a train for sure.
Wasn’t everybody saying the opposite like 3 months ago?
Well I guess it’s not mechanic failures of the train that derails them.
The regulation on passenger rail is MUCH stronger then on freight.
That’s freight rail. Freight rail is a full blown late-stage capitalist hellscape. Aging infrastructure that hasn’t seen maintenance since the New Deal, companies that refuse to update equipment because paying out lawsuits when it breaks is cheaper, overworked employees who aren’t even allowed to call out sick, etc…
Compared to that, passenger rail is a fucking pipedream.
But doesn’t Amtrak share the same rails with freight? Sure maybe the trains themselves are better maintained but if the rails themselves are in bad shape the train won’t get far.
Perhaps, but you don’t have as far to fall.
(e: oh, I mistook your comment for sarcasm. Ignore my reply; I agree.)
Ergo, less time to contemplate your last moments. I like it.
Sure, but… commercial airliners almost never crash?
Most planes in general don’t crash, fwiw. Most trains and cars don’t, either.
But would you rather your Uber was a Camry or a Lada Niva?
Planes are vastly safer than trains.
“Passenger vehicles are by far the most dangerous motorized transportation option compared. Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per 100,000,000 passenger miles was over 20 times higher than for buses, 17 times higher than for passenger trains, and 595 times higher than for scheduled airlines.”
…nsc.org/…/deaths-by-transportation-mode/
That’s true in general. Planes are very safe overall.
My father has some airlines he’s okay with and some he won’t fly under any circumstances. I’m not talking about overall statistics, but what he knows about the industry’s practices, including mechanical and pilot issues.
Just my .02$
Uhhhh… can we get his list of those he won’t fly on?
I’ll ask next time we play VR mini golf this Saturday.
Worth noting that the per-mile and per-trip stats are different. Planes have low per-mile rates because nobody sane is using a plane to get across town. They only use planes for long-distance trips where driving/taking the train isn’t feasible. So by default, planes will have low per-mile rates because virtually every trip is a high mileage event. In short, planes drastically water down their per-mile averages.
When you look at it from a per-trip viewpoint, cars are safer. Which makes sense. You drive to work hundreds of times per year, but maybe ride a plane twice? So a single car crash is going to be a drop in the bucket when compared to the thousands of car trips you’ve taken in your life, but a single plane crash will be a massive spike in the numbers.
I just wanted to point out how statistics can be used to justify either side. Lots of people want to rely on numbers for everything, as if statistics can’t be manipulated. But they can, and you can bet your ass that if a party has a vested interest in stats showing one result over another, a team of statisticians can figure out a way to make it happen.
Thank you, PM_Your_Nudes_Please, for an wonderfully insightful comment on the nature of statistics in transportation accidents.
In 95% of all car accidents, the driver has eaten carrot in the week prior to the accident.
you may now draw your own conclusion
TIL 95% of people eat carrots at least once a week.
I certainly don’t eat them nearly as often. I also don’t drive, so that checks out.
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Additional consideration: How safe a car trip is, can be influenced a lot by the driver. As a frequent driver (I wished I could use trains instead, but our train system regularly sucks for many connections :( ), I feel that 95+ per cent of accidents could be avoided if the driver was driving careful themselves plus anticipating the errors of other drivers. I get into so many situations that could be dangerous for me as well, but I typically avoid the danger because I see the crazy people maneuvers coming before they execute them. My hopes are that on the occasions when I make a driving mistake, someone else will be there to watch out for me as well.
Long story short: In a plane, you\re putting your life into someone else’s hand. In a car, you at least have the illusion of control, but I claim that you actually do have some control over avoiding accidents.
The same could be said of issues with flights. The difference is you’re not the driver, but also there are many, many more layers of safety in flying.
Only one thing has to go wrong for a car crash, which could easily be completely out of control of the driver and their vehicle (eg another driver). Several things have to go wrong for a plane to crash, the holes in many layers of Swiss cheese have to align.
True, but statistically, the cases where a single thing going wrong causes an accident make up only a tiny fraction of car accidents. And freak accidents like “rockfall as you exit a tunnel” can also happen to planes - e.g. being shot out of the sky by russian war criminals.
Edit: additionally, capitalist corporations are by definition looking to maximize profits, meaning they cut corners - often outright criminally - which is what led to the article we’re commenting on, and also to the murder of the full crew & passengers of two Boeing 737-MAX.
Still, I see no Boeing CEO charged with murder - or even manslaughter.
I doubt that’s true. I think most car accidents are caused when people aren’t paying enough attention - a single person doesn’t do what they’re supposed to do. Airline travel has built in redundancies - the two pilots only have to focus their attention fully during takeoff and landing, at altitude they have a few thousand feet to get back in control of any situation but below 10,000 feet they have a sterile cockpit with no casual conversation. Hell, a plane can lose all of its engines due to a bird strike and still manage to fly, in one case landing intact in a river with no fatalities. Then there’s maintenance, airplanes are so well looked after that we identified a very clever (yet worryingly extensive) scam of fraudulent parts, before any accident happend as a result of them.
Airlines are far, far more prepared than drivers are. Obviously airlines have worse situations to prepare for, but they prepare so well that the overall risk (likelihood x severity) is lower.
Half the Boeing CEO’s came from McDonnell Douglas, and with them they brought their habit of ignoring issues at the design stage then denying them until at least two fatal accidents have occurred. If they got away with it then there’s no reason they won’t continue to - but that’s more of a symptom of corporate Wall St than airline manufacturers specifically. Before the merger, Boeing had an excellent reputation as an engineering company and behaved as such.
You’re describing a publicly traded company, not necessarily all capitalist corporations. If you privately own a business you can run it into the ground if you like, or just run a little mom & pop shop that keeps its prices low so you break even. CEO’s of public companies are obligated by law to pursue profits.
We’re talking about publicly traded businesses here so that point is somewhat moot, but nonetheless I don’t think you’ve demonstrated that all airliners looking to cut corners criminally. They certainly want profits - who doesn’t - but most manage to stay well within the bounds of the law and safety standards. When they don’t, the level of detailed investigation we get and the attention we pay might make it seem less safe, but it actually proves just how much safer the industry is.
What I meant is: this on its own rarely ever leads to an accident. Most accidents are not cars flying off the road hitting a tree on their own. Most accidents involve multiple vehicles. And at that point it is the majority of accidents where the other affected drivers did not anticipate the mistake of the one causing the accident, and did not do anything to correct for said mistake.
With regards to Boeing, sadly you are very much correct:
That’s actually my main problem with this. Legislation is built to protect corporations, not individuals. When there’s a conflict of interests, corporations take precedence in 9 cases out of 10.
I am not saying all airliners look to cut corners criminally, but they often demonstrate criminal energy or are criminally negligent. This is a bigger problem in the US than in Europe, I feel - our corporate greed is closely following in the US corporation footsteps, though. Our CEOs et al wish they could pull off what the US american ones can already get away with.
If you are considering two modes of transportation for a airplane-suitable trip, the per-trip stat is effectively irrelevant. If we consider a 1,000 mile trip and want to choose the safest manner of travel to the destination aircraft will statistically be the safest transportation method.
I don’t really agree. If I have two choices to make a long distance trip, drive or fly, it is safer to fly. If I’m going to the grocery store, there’s no option to fly, so using those type of trips in the calculation doesn’t make sense.
If we talk about the safety of cars vs planes, we should really only be considering trips of a distance where planes are a viable option. Even then a trips per crash seems like a far worse metric than miles per crash. You want to account for complexity of the trips still.
Do you have any statistics about the total number of miles driven by cars every day vs. miles flown by planes daily? Somehow, just based on the amount of cars worldwide, I’d bet that there are far more miles driven by cars daily than miles flown by planes, so accidents per mile would still be a significant statistic. Because even though planes fligh thousands of miles per trip, cars are numbered in millions, in the US alone. So I’d bet that if every car trip was one mile, which is very conservative, you’d still have more miles driven daily than flown in the US. Which makes deaths per mile a lot more scary.
Accidents per trip would be relevant as well, but how many commercial airliners crash every day vs. how many cars crash every day? How many people die a year from commercial airline crashes vs. from car crashes? I’d bet that even per trip cars are less safe than planes.
I live in a mostly rural area, and we have had 4 deaths on the motorway nearby over the past 3 or 4 months. And that is just in one region,with low to moderate traffic and low population density (lots of farms and woods around here). Also, never knew anyone who died in a plane crash, in over 40 years, but have had 2 close friends die in car crashes, never mind acquaintances or friends of friends. And I bet everyone, in developing or developed countries, knows someone who died in a car crash, whereas I’d bet that most people don’t have even acquaintances or friend of friends that died in plane crashes.
So I’d really like to see numbers on that claim that, per trip, cars are safer, because in 2021, with no deaths from commercial planes in the US, that claim does not stand, because you could have an infinite number of car trips that year, and still be less safe than commercial planes with one single dead person.
I wouldn’t care because I understand how probability works.
When I’m driving down the highway, I spend as little time as possible next to semi-trailers because I’ve met loads of drivers and know how many are on heavy drugs or haven’t slept for far too long so they can meet their deadlines.
Probability-wise, it’s safe, but I don’t like it. Not everything is about raw numbers, Mr Spock.
Niva🤩
That’s a bit of a myth. Large commercial planes are very save, that’s true. Small planes and helicopters on the other side can be very dangerous, as they fly around in far less controlled situations. They are so dangerous in fact that being a pilot is one of the most dangerous jobs around, only behind logging.
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Yes, sorry, I meant commercial planes. I should have clarified.
When I was young and learning to fly, he told me if I ever got into ultralites he’d disown me (he was sort of kidding).
1NR is trying hard to change that
Yikes.
For a while I hated flying. Freaked me out even though I knew statistically it is a safe form of travel. Then I watched a bunch of Air Disasters shows and realized how many fixes they have put in place and I felt a lot better about flying.
Then I subbed to /r/AviationMaintenance. I really don’t want to fly anymore.
The whole Boeing Max shitshow is why flying makes me nervous now.
Flying is still safer than driving, FWIW. Not sure if that makes you feel better about flying or worse about driving (for me it’s the latter).
It’s kinda weird actually how normalized driving is. There’s a lot of people who are so scared of flying that they won’t do it. But far fewer people take such an approach to being in a personal vehicle, despite being massively more dangerous.
I think it’s because car deaths are just so normalized that most people are numb to them. It’s kinda like that iconic Joker monologue about how it’s “all according to the plan”. People are afraid of exemplary things, not the mundane things that will actually kill them.
Also, not driving is not really an option in a lot of places. Driving terrifies me, but I just have to deal or not eat 🤷♂️
I’m personally more afraid of driving. The learning and tests for pilots are extensive (I’ve done a lot of it), but any moron can get a driving license, and most lose much of that knowledge shortly after.
Other drivers are fucking scary.
The first time I went skydiving, my instructor was a retired aircraft mechanic. He said something along the lines of “People always ask me why I’d want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. I tell them that I worked on planes for 30 years, and there is no such thing as a perfectly good airplane.”
Used to think it was statistically safe, then 737MAX crashes happened. Not trusting any airplane manufacturer any more.
After all of the high profile train derailments in recent history, primarily caused by decaying infrastructure, bad standards, and cutting corners, makes me wonder if there’s someone with an extensive background in rail out there with a license plate that says “FLY AIR”.
I guess it’s really just a question of whether you take the risk you know or the one you don’t.
That’s cargo rail tho. Fatal passenger rail accidents are very rare and involve multiple human and system failures.
I am an Aerospace Engineer (I was an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer by trade prior to going to University) and I have spent the last 30 years in the airline industry….it isn’t as bad as you are allegedly making it out to be….pilots are not engineers either……
Experience from the 60’s and 70’s isn’t really relevant to today’s industry- I started in the early 90’s and it’s massively different today from back then….so your point is?
I am also based in Australia so that might also make a bit of a difference because we have had no airline crashes in this country and we have a very strict Potentially Unwanted Parts (PUP’s) system and other checks and balances that because we are under EASA based regulations and not FAA ones (who, by the way allowed the PMA part system….where parts are no longer required to be manufactured by the OEM for aircraft….and I’ve got plenty of stories about that nonsense…)
So yeah…. I quite happily still fly everywhere around the world….
My dad is both a pilot and engineer. I’m aware not all pilots are. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear. If you’re in the industry, this will dox me, but my dad designed the Taylorcraft tri-gear (the F-22; there are still Taylorcrafts out there with rivets I put in them in the early 80s, because I basically grew up in the factory), and converted the original WACO biplane blueprints from the Smithsonian to modern specs so they could be manufactured again. He also designed the WACO Super class and their conversion to sea floats about ten years ago or so (the YMF-5; as an aerospace engineer, I’m sure you know that’s not a simple engineering task). He designed and engineered all the features this video from last year talks about; I don’t mean ancient history.
He’s currently 88 and still works full-time at WACO. He knows what he’s talking about. He still travels to the EU about every year for WACO. His knowledge is not outdated.
My point is just to relay what I’ve heard from my dad on this topic for US airlines specifically, and that I trust his opinion personally. Nothing more.
e: sorry for all the edits, my Lemmy client hates me. FWIW, one of my dad’s current titles at WACO is ‘Airworthiness Manager’. You can find him on LinkedIn. Just search ‘waco classic airworthiness manager’.
Sounds like my dad, who after working as a computer programmer consultant since the early 70s, has become a Luddite, to the point that he won’t even wear a digital watch. I wonder what a railroad engineer would tell your father.
It would not take much for a boiler on a train to blow, I’m sure there were all sorts of corners cut.
Do Diesel engines even use boilers? I know electric ones don’t. You don’t see a whole lot of functioning steam engines these days. They are neat though. Noisy AF.
I thought you were talking back in the day when you referenced railroad engineers talking to op’s father. Ie even way back when the people that ran old steam locomotives had the same opinion.
Funny enough my FIL was a train engineer for steam engines but transitioned to maintaining boilers at a hospital as most steam engines were being phased out early in his career.
My dad is the opposite of a Luddite. At 88, he still works for the airplane manufacturer, builds his own computers, and is getting into VR.
Once you’ve seen the sausage made it’s hard to love sausage. Doesn’t mean the sausage is terrible, it just makes you think of watching it get made.
Earlier this year a bunch of people got stuck on a 4 hour Amtrak ride for like 18+ hours, without power, toilets or water. Were told they couldn’t leave and not allowed/able to transfer to another train.
I’d rather just die in an incredibly rare plane crash than trust AmTrak to get me across the country in days versus a flight which can get me there in hours.
They need budget to actually upgrade their fleet.
That’s happened multiple times with planes, not just once last year.
It happened as recently as last month
Here are more:
July 2023
June 2023
December 2022
May 2022.
I could keep going, but this is hard on mobile.
Point is, that happens with planes, too. That’s a logistics issue, not about the method of transport.
Story may have a bit of “then everyone clapped” vibes, but I can definitely get down with more trains.
Non-paywall link for anyone: …yahoo.com/…/escalating-scandal-grips-airlines-in…
Thank you.
I remember watching an American 60 Minutes episode about commercial airlines buying fake plane parts, maybe 20+ years ago. Depressing to see it still happens.
I remember that one. They also discussed how most large airports had the ability to fully service aircraft and how there were only a few depots such as Texas and hiring skilled illegals as mechanics to service the majority of aircraft to cut costs and take advantage of those workers.
There are several carriers who only perform maintenence in Mexico and South America to save money and avoid unexpected FAA peeks at the maintenance records.
Which carriers are those?
There are many places things get done for refurbishment of seats and interiors - lots in China.
All places doing heavy C and D checks are FAA certified, for US registered airlines regardless of where they do the work.
airwaysmag.com/abcds-aircraft-maintenance/
Delta Techops does lots of work on their own planes and others.
Small airlines won’t be able to afford to run their own heavy check facilities and will certainly outsource.
What I want to know is what that part was.
TurboEncabulator. The most precise component in the entire evolutionary aeroplane cycle. I would not want a counterfeit.
I shudder to think that a plane could have gotten off the ground with its turbo unencabulated. The horror.
That’s old tech. The HyperEncabulator is where it’s at.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
HyperEncabulator
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Since nobody have a serious reply, two parts are mentioned in the article, a turbine blade and a turbine nozzle.
Oh, nothing important then
Rooting for beverage cart panel.
I am very glad my next international trip will by by train.
Harder to do for us in Australia.
Harder, but not impossible.
How exactly would you leave Australia by train?
Train goes onto ship, ship sails out, train continues on the other end :)
Fine. Take my upvote, dad
This actually exists in a couple places. For instance, the rail connection between mainland Italy and Sicily is by boat with the train on the boat.
Lol
Use your imagination!
A really big ramp
Alright, alright! I’ll let you borrow my emu for the week.
Hard for us in America too, but it’s because our trains suck.
Until it derails die to shitty track maintenance, or a drunk consuctor
Accidents happen everywhere and airplanes are about the safest mode of transport
I prefer my crashes to be remedied by holding a button for seven seconds.
So what happened to the whole “every part is tracked from production to installation and through maintenance checks?”
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It sounds like it is and that’s how they were able to catch on to this fake parts company.
I think he means, why didn’t they catch the first one?
You’ve tracked them, but that doesn’t mean you’ve followed up at every second of every day to see if the company still exists.
This is the right answer. When we perform maintenance on our aircraft there’s a logbook entry that contains very specific details about the part that went in, such as its serial number, but really that’s so the insurance company can track down the culprit after the crash. Not many individuals are doing the tracing themselves.
I think there is trust in the system because the part came with all the necessary paperwork and everything checks out. In this case the shady parts company was forging certification documents from other manufacturers. That’s going to be hard to catch no matter how effective the system is.
Yeah, it’ll be easy to catch if you actually dig into it, but if you’re not given a reason to, it might take a while to catch; which is exactly what happened
Everything checking out:
“Several of the filings are riddled with typos, including misspelled executive titles and oddly capitalized words that appear to have happened when someone hit caps lock instead of the “A” key.”
Nor did they ensure the credentials were legitimate, which is super hard if you’re not specifically looking for it and aware it’s occurring. Someone had insider knowledge and exploited a vulnerability.
Dock To stock policies and “there is no added value in inspection” LEAN sucks.
that’s how they figured this out.
if aviation parts were like auto parts, it would be next to impossible to trace which jets had the bogus parts and how long it had been installed
It’s called outsourcing. You outsource the risk and it magically goes away….
Or does it.
It sort of does. “Our vendor signed legally binding documents that they were responsible for vetting and verifying all parts. Sue them, not us.”
Unless by risk you mean an airplane falling out of the sky…
Risk impact comes in all forms from: it did nothing, to it destroyed our reputation, or even we killed people. Measuring risk impact and understanding the risks are incredibly important and outsourcing & hiding the risks behind a contract can’t protect your company’s reputation or the people killed at the end of the day
You wouldn’t download a jet engine…
Wanna bet… 3D printing is amazing! 😉
But is your 3D printer amazing?
Best, it’s beautiful, bigly…
youtu.be/qsvpU7G5IJg
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://youtu.be/qsvpU7G5IJg?si=YalJq9VGyxQ6JIYF
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I bought my Technics Direct-drive turntable Model SL-Q20 in 1981 or 1982, still working like a champ.
Can you fly on it?
Did, back in the day. I’d put on my Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” and we’d get real high.
Now boarding Liquid Sky Direct airlines.
Gate 25.
Well that’s great news. Give me 15 minutes and a Xerox, and I’ll have that bad boy certified to be installed into the avionics of a 737.
OK I’m here but I don’t know what to do with our 15 minutes together
Now kith
Boo, paywall. Anyone have a list of the affected airlines?
Preprend 12ft.io/ to the URL: 12ft.io/…/why-so-many-flights-canceled-delayed-ao…
First time I see that website actually working.
Tbh better for the consumer to pay for a newspaper than have it run by some billionaire who can afford to run it endlessly free of charge just so he can propagate his world view.
For example, The Washington Post now run owned by Jeff bezos give all the free articles how keeping the billionaire class and cooking the planet is actually a good thing
Real news costs money while fake news are free. Guess what happens?
Southwest, United, American Airlines, Virgin Australia
Glad I fly Delta, even with the typically higher cost.
Oh cool wardogs 2: the enshittification with jonah hill should be dope
this is occuring in other industries as well to the point of affecting a lot of stuff surprised there is not more articles pertaining to this
Right to repair your tractor? Hell no!
Fake ass parts with MTBF of a few hundred hours installed by the dealer? Yeah that’s cool!
Thanks regulatory capture and corrupt govt!!!
I hate planes and flying. Just another reason to add to the pile.
<img alt="Fuck Planes" src="https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/da453820-fe27-43bd-a694-d243a2cc68c0.jpeg">
Flying southwest 3 times in November, wish me luck fellas
May the odds be ever in your favour
May the odds be ever in your favor.
May the sod never be in your collar
Something like that I’m not good at this
When we looked for the autopilot computer, we just found a small, tired indian man in a compartment
indianTurkishTurkish Airline now have different meaning
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk
*Automan
Underrated comment…
Otto pilot
Fly by night industry indeed.
But. “flying the safest mode of transport”
And people wonder why I hate flying.
Just flew southwest twice last week… cool cool cool cool.
Hey, you just survived twice last week. It’s something…
Sir, we’ve discovered that these fuselages that we have been installing for the last 3 months are all made out of paper mache.
CEO: Shit we’re going to get sued! Do anything else to tell me?
We opened up a black box and nothing was inside except for Three paper clips and a dead AA battery.
Right, well, best shellac the paper mache and get going
That’s a clever scam. The magic is all in the name. AOG stand for Aircraft On Ground. Whenever there is a sefty risk identified, the rules says authorities and the industry must be advised within 24h. When a customer call about an AOG there is no 24h thing must happen right fucking now. Safety issues mean a plane could fall someday maybe, but AOG mean loosing money right now, by the minutes. So if you have a distributor that can send a part that will get the plane off the ground, with a bunch of papers it’s getting sold for a high price.