irrational fear of flying

[randonneur]

https://www.aviacionline.com/2023/09...-engine-parts/

Occurrence reports have been submitted to the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) indicating that several CFM56 engine parts distributed by AOG Technics have been supplied with a falsified Authorized Release Certificate (ARC). In each confirmed example, the approved organisation, identified on the ARC, has attested that the form did not originate from within their organisation, and the certificate has been falsified

and: https://simpleflying.com/united-airl...-engine-parts/

United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and Virgin Airlines have all discovered faulty engine parts supplied by fraudulent manufacturer AOG Technics.

This is terrifying to me, though I guess there's some comfort in the fact that it was discovered.

[rwsaunders]

Interesting article about an 11-hour proving flight, which is part of the process of certifying the new Airbus A321XLR.

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/a...mpaign=website

[vertical_doug]

https://www.aviacionline.com/2023/09...-engine-parts/



and: https://simpleflying.com/united-airl...-engine-parts/



This is terrifying to me, though I guess there's some comfort in the fact that it was discovered.

Except there is never one cockroach. There are more like this.

Give the broker immunity, you need to find the fake manufacturer and the rest of the ecosystem.
I doubt the idiot director of the broker is the mastermind.

[echappist]

Well damn, apparently the FAA is facing two different potential lapses (lapse of working federal budget and lapse in authorization to collect taxes from airline). How is the latter even possible?

Article here (gift link).

What's difficult to comprehend about the latter is that the agency for which I work never needs renewal of authorization to charge for services.

[bcm119]

Well damn, apparently the FAA is facing two different potential lapses (lapse of working federal budget and lapse in authorization to collect taxes from airline). How is the latter even possible?

Article here (gift link).

What's difficult to comprehend about the latter is that the agency for which I work never needs renewal of authorization to charge for services.

I've always felt the problem with partial government shutdowns is that they're partial. If everything ground to a screeching halt, the idiots in congress would learn to compromise pretty quickly. And I say that as a civil servant who will be furloughed with guaranteed back pay.

[echappist]

I've always felt the problem with partial government shutdowns is that they're partial. If everything ground to a screeching halt, the idiots in congress would learn to compromise pretty quickly. And I say that as a civil servant who will be furloughed with guaranteed back pay.

You are right, of course.

And sorry to hear of the potential furlough. Hope things turn out well.

[72gmc]

I've always felt the problem with partial government shutdowns is that they're partial. If everything ground to a screeching halt, the idiots in congress would learn to compromise pretty quickly. And I say that as a civil servant who will be furloughed with guaranteed back pay.

Shutdown should mean congress critters are also not paid, and have only limited access to the benefits of their offices (as in, enough access to work it out and restart the gov't)

I'm currently scheduled to fly within the next week. Keeping the plan for now, sort of interested to see if my TSA pre-check status lessens the pain if the shutdown happens.

[Dave Thompson]

Full moon, 38,000 feet over Greenland.

[j44ke]

Shutdown should mean congress critters are also not paid...

Thus the gold bullion in the sock drawer of the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey. Rainy day or government shutdown - same same.

[vertical_doug]

The Big Read- Bloomberg

Airlines Are Racing to Hunt Down the Fake Parts in Their Fleets
2023-10-11 23:00:09.991 GMT


By Julie Johnsson, Ryan Beene, Siddharth Vikram Philip and
Sabah Meddings
(Bloomberg) -- This spring, engineers at TAP Air Portugal’s
maintenance subsidiary huddled around an aircraft engine that
had come in for repair. The exposed CFM56 turbine looked like
just another routine job for a shop that handles more than 100
engines a year. Only this time, there was cause for alarm.
Workers noticed that a replacement part, a damper to reduce
vibration, showed signs of wear, when the accompanying paperwork
identified the component as fresh from the production line. On
June 21, TAP pointed out the discrepancy to Safran SA, the
French aerospace company that makes CFM engines together with
General Electric Co.
Safran quickly determined that the paperwork had been
forged. The signature wasn’t that of a company employee, and the
reference and purchase order numbers on the part also didn’t add
up.
To date, Safran and GE have uncovered more than 90 other
certificates that had similarly been falsified, all linked to
the same parts distributor in London: AOG Technics Ltd., a
little-known outfit started eight years ago by a young
entrepreneur named Jose Alejandro Zamora Yrala.
While engineers are trained to spot components of dubious
origin, “it’s always shocking when we have one in front of our
eyes,” said a person familiar with the revelation, who asked not
to be identified discussing internal deliberations.

The discovery by an alert crew in Lisbon blew the cover off
a massive aviation fraud that has left engine makers and their
customers in a frantic race to stem the fallout. As a result of
the fabrications, thousands of parts with improper documentation
have wound up at airlines, distributors and workshops around the
globe. From there, they’ve ended up inside jet engines,
effectively contaminating a growing portion of the world’s most
widely flown airliner fleet.
This story is based on legal and corporate filings,
regulatory disclosures and social-media accounts, as well as
information obtained from industry executives and people
familiar with Zamora’s career, who asked not to be identified
given the sensitive nature of the relationships.
All major US carriers and half a dozen others have
identified bogus parts from AOG on their airplanes. While no
flight emergencies have been called due to engine malfunctions,
the audacity of the scam, dating back several years, highlights
a risky gap in a system that’s made flying the world’s safest
form of transportation. And the ease at which safety protocols
were breached has prompted soul-searching in an industry where a
decades-old system has suddenly revealed worrying loopholes.
“If people want to cheat, it’s going to be hard to stop
them,” said Tim Zemanovic, who runs Fillmore Aviation LLC, a
Minneapolis-area company that sells recycled aircraft parts.
“There’s a lot of trust involved.”
Read more: Fake Spare Parts Were Supplied to Fix Top-
Selling Jet Engine
Hardly a week has passed by since late August, when
Bloomberg first reported on the scandal, without another airline
finding so-called suspected unapproved parts on older-generation
Airbus SE A320 or Boeing Co. 737 aircraft. Complicating the
search is the fact that the CFM56 is by far the most widely
flown engine, with more than 22,000 units still in service — a
CFM56-powered aircraft takes off every two seconds somewhere on
the planet. Given the global nature of aviation, parts with
fabricated certificates have now washed up everywhere, from the
US to China to as far away as Australia.
Behind the furor is an upstart distributor with the veneer
of respectability. On its now-deleted website, AOG boasted of
warehouses in the UK, Singapore, Frankfurt and Miami, calling
itself a “leading global aircraft support provider’’ with a
mission to “keep our clients flying.’’ Its inventory of parts
was listed on the biggest online clearinghouse. A quality-
assurance organization endorsed by the Federal Aviation
Administration had accredited AOG’s practices.
It was all a charade. The obscure distributor hoodwinked
the biggest names in aviation, selling thousands of jet-engine
parts with forged airworthiness records, according to regulators
and industry executives. In some cases, AOG allegedly sold
refurbished used parts with paperwork claiming they were brand-
new, potentially netting huge profits in the process. And the
company may have done so by exploiting what critics say is a
decades-old blind spot in the aviation regulatory system.
“It’s a bit strange that a phantom company can be allowed
to supply spare parts with false certification documents,”
Safran Chief Executive Officer Olivier Andries said. “We don’t
know who they sold those parts to and whether all airlines have
done their checks.”
Historically, regulators have kept a watchful eye over
airlines and the planes they put into the sky. Individual parts
that get swapped in and out when a jet comes in for repairs have
their own carefully documented history. Bundles of paperwork
tell a story of inspections, overhauls and whether a part can
still be safely used.
Such relentless obsession with safety and record-keeping
can’t mask the fact that within the industry lies an essentially
self-regulated, highly lucrative marketplace: parts
distribution. Here, intermediaries help circulate hundreds of
thousands of parts each year between manufacturers, airlines and
repair stations. Personal connections mean sourcing specialists
buy and sell from vendors they know.

Into this clubby world stepped a young, part-time DJ
originally from Venezuela. In 2015, Zamora established AOG in
Hove, corporate records show. From the sleepy coastal town about
an hour’s train ride south of London, Zamora spent the next few
years expanding his network. He eventually relocated to an
upmarket London office address — in reality, just a mail drop
rented from a co-working provider.
Zamora hasn’t engaged in attempts to get his side of the
story. Reached briefly by phone on Oct. 5, he hung up when he
was told he was speaking with a reporter. Zamora’s wife, Sarah
Leddin, said that Bloomberg had been “trying to paint him out
to be some bad person or something.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to anyone because the information
is fabricated at best,” she said by phone. Zamora’s barrister,
Tom Cleaver with the legal firm Blackstone Chambers, hasn’t
responded to attempts seeking comment.
Long-term acquaintances say they’ve not heard from Zamora
in months. He told Doug Hensley, the chief safety and regulatory
counsel at GE Aerospace, on Aug. 2 that he was out of the
country on vacation. He had, however, in the meantime stopped
selling GE and CFM-related parts “as a courtesy,’’ legal filings
show.
GE and Safran are now facing off with AOG in a London
court. The CFM International engine-making partners had sought a
court order for the documents relating to “every single sale of
products.” AOG produced the records on Oct. 4, giving CFM fresh
potential leads.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency said it has no
power to investigate AOG because suppliers are not regulated.
The FAA said it encourages companies to maintain a system to
detect unapproved parts and to review their suppliers.
Maintenance companies and airlines that repair planes have the
responsibility to ensure any component installed on an aircraft
is an approved, legitimate part, and the FAA lacks the resources
to do so, a spokesperson said. The UK Civil Aviation Authority
said it supports the FAA and EASA as they look into the supply
of unapproved parts by AOG.
Born in 1988, Zamora dabbled in professions from music to
real estate before settling into the world of aircraft parts.
For a while, he spun techno tunes under the stage name Santa
Militia in Venezuela, Italy and Spain. In 2022, he married
Leddin, an interior designer, on the island of Mallorca. The
couple was photographed at the rural luxury retreat, sporting
matching Rolex watches and cradling a pair of babies dressed in
identical cream-colored rompers.
Zamora began his aerospace career around 2010 as an account
manager at AJW, a prominent engine maintenance provider better
known as Walters in aviation circles. There, he dealt with
airlines based in Latin America — from AeroMexico and Avianca to
Brazil’s GOL. He later moved on to the UK operation of Florida-
based maintenance company GA Telesis LLC, before eventually
setting up AOG.

He typically worked from home, logging onto the ILS
platform, an aerospace-parts marketplace, to check out requests
from airlines and maintenance shops and which components were
available, according to a person familiar with his routine.
AOG started off humbly. After a year in business, the
brokerage had just £7,804 in cash, company filings show. The
fledgling company moved from residence to residence around the
London area over the next few years as its sales gradually grew.
By early 2019, it had £18,295 in cash and made a profit of
£22,042, the records show.
Then business abruptly prospered. For the year ending
February 2020, AOG reported £2.43 million in cash and a profit
of £2.2 million, company records show. That’s shortly after AOG
began selling thousands of jet-engine parts with falsified
documents, the engine makers allege, in what Matthew Reeve, a
lawyer for CFM, has described in legal filings as a
sophisticated deception “on an industrial scale.”
Legal filings reveal the scope and means of the alleged
fraud. Forgeries turned up at an engine services provider
northeast of London, a parts supplier in Florida, a maintenance
firm in Scandinavia, an airline in Africa and another
maintenance outfit incorporated in Germany, among others.
How an intensely regulated and safety-obsessed industry
could be deceived by a single rogue outfit remains one of the
big mysteries of the unfolding case.
Forged records cited by CFM’s lawyers were dated as far
back as 2018, suggesting a years-long deception. Some bore faked
signatures of actual Safran employees, while others were signed
off by former workers. Then there’s a certain Geoffrey Chirac,
who shares a last name with the late French president. CFM says
in legal filings his signature was forged.
Other signatories appear to have also been fabricated:
several forms were signed by a Michael Smith. His now-deleted
LinkedIn profile presented him as a purported AOG quality
assurance manager.
But his profile picture can also be found on stock-image
sites, where he’s described as a “confident senior man in white
T-shirt.” The photo is particularly popular in the medical
profession, featuring on the websites of a Wisconsin
cardiologist, an Oregon dentist and a Barcelona rectal surgeon.
LinkedIn profiles of some purported AOG executives also
used stock photos that appeared on other websites. Companies
listed on the profiles as former employers say they have no
records of these people.
Read more: Bogus Supplier of Jet-Engine Parts May Have Fake
Workers Too
How an intensely regulated and safety-obsessed industry
could be deceived by a single rogue outfit remains one of the
big mysteries of the unfolding case. It’s a vulnerability the
aviation industry has been dealing with for decades, but has
never successfully addressed.
The most high-profile accident involving fake parts
occurred on Sept. 8, 1989, when Partnair Flight 394 carrying 55
people from Oslo to Hamburg crashed into the sea, killing
everyone on board. Investigators later determined that
counterfeit bolts and brackets had caused the tail section of
the Convair CV-580 turboprop to vibrate violently and eventually
tear loose.
A rash of bogus aircraft parts sparked a furor in the
1990s. As the US Transportation Department’s Inspector General
at the time, Mary Schiavo led investigations into fake parts
that helped secure about 120 criminal convictions between 1990
and 1996.
She told a Senate oversight panel in 1995 that the industry
was so awash with suspect components that one “must unavoidably
draw this conclusion: if it is a part of an airplane, it could
be bogus.” She also sparred with FAA officials, whom she accused
of downplaying the potential risks posed by unapproved parts.
In Schiavo’s view, AOG’s alleged misdeeds show that
vulnerability continues to exist today.
“We were busting people and sending them to prison 20 years
ago for this,” she said in an interview. “It’s the same old
scheme.”
The FAA released a voluntary program in 1996 for parts
sellers to agree to audits and other checks by industry
organizations in order to accredit their quality practices. The
idea was to address a lack of documentation and traceability
plaguing distributors at the time, without further straining the
FAA’s already limited resources.
Almost three decades later, bogus parts continue to pose
possible safety risks. And as if to illustrate the point, CFM
made another, more troubling discovery: having reviewed nearly
600 of its material suppliers, it, too had been directly duped
by AOG.
The engine maker’s own shops installed parts sold by AOG in
16 CFM56 engines. In four instances, parts from the rogue firm
made their way into CFM’s network, including one lot purchased
directly from the UK company.

Subsequently, CFM inspectors noticed some major
discrepancies with the parts in question, which AOG had
represented as brand-new. For example, the low-pressure turbine
blades CFM bought weren’t as bright as they should have been.
They also showed signs of welding and residual corrosion,
something that shouldn’t have appeared on new parts.
CFM concluded that the parts were in fact repaired, used
components. The company says it plans to review its practices
for evaluating suppliers.
“What you need to do is know that your supply chain, the
providers you’re dealing with, are reputable,” said Willie
Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport
Association. “It’s like anything: know who your partner is, know
their track record, that they know who their partners are and
that the chain is secure.”
“Hopefully you have a routine to go through all your
thousands of records one by one to see if AOG was in them — and
to look three suppliers deep.”
While quality departments are meant to keep an eye out for
suspicious activity — and the threat of jail to discourage faked
parts and forged documents — there are real-world limitations.
In practice, documentation relies on paper records, and there is
no centralized repository, meaning much of the verification is
performed on the basis of faith in the records.
The financial and operational cost of having to remove
parts stands to be considerable. Charges could quickly rise to
about $300,000 per engine, depending on how deep teams need to
furrow, said Adil Slimani, the director of aftermarket advisory
at consultant IBA Group. Then there’s the lost revenue from
idling an aircraft that is an industry workhorse.
“Hopefully you have a routine to go through all your
thousands of records one by one to see if AOG was in them — and
to look three suppliers deep,” said Roy Resto, a consultant who
specializes in aircraft maintenance.
Airlines that have discovered suspect parts have been
advised by regulators to remove them. In the case of AOG, these
have turned out not to be harmless components like armrests or
coffee machines, but instead bearings and turbine blades crucial
to a modern jet engine.
In a worst case, they could be discarded or damaged
components that have no business being in the unforgiving heart
of a jet engine. There, temperatures run hotter than the melting
point of metal and blades can spin at more than 10,000
revolutions per minute.
For now at least, AOG’s alleged misdeeds don’t appear to
present an immediate risk to flight safety. There’s no evidence
that so-called life-limited parts — the most safety-critical
components in an engine that by law must be removed after a
certain number of flights — were involved. Examples in court
filings point to used components masquerading as new, rather
than wholesale knock-offs.
Still, the AOG scandal renews questions about what critics
say has been a weak link in aviation safety for decades.
In 2021, AOG’s operations were accredited by Transonic
Aviation Consultants Inc., one of only a handful of
organizations deemed acceptable by the FAA to confer that
designation. By then, AOG’s alleged scheme was already well
under way.
Transonic CEO Bob Pina said a subcontractor hired by his
firm inspected AOG’s operation in London and reported back that
everything appeared to be in order. Pina said he stripped the
company of its accreditation in early September, immediately
after learning of the alleged forgeries.
Like others in the industry, Pina said he was “bamboozled”
by Zamora, saying there was little he could do head off his
alleged misdeeds.
“You can’t do any type of inspection to find out if people
are bad,” Pina said. “They appeared to be good, but once you
turn your back on them, rats will do what rats will do.”

One of the world’s largest parts distributors is pushing to
bring more oversight to their business. GA Telesis CEO Abdol
Moabery has urged lawmakers in Washington to convene a hearing
about unapproved parts in aviation, in the hope that Congress
will push the FAA to impose some form of regulation on companies
like his. But tracing parts and providing seamless documentation
is time-consuming and costly.
“I have 17 inspectors that do nothing but look at
paperwork,” Moabery said. “That’s expensive.”
The temptation to cut corners won’t go away any time soon.
A post-Covid shortage of both parts and labor has dramatically
crimped aircraft availability, putting additional pressure on
airlines and maintenance shops — and creating a fertile ground
for opportunists.
This squeeze is especially acute for older engines that
power a previous generation of narrowbody Airbus and Boeing
workhorses. While airlines are slowly moving to newer models,
their predecessors are still among the most popular aircraft in
the skies today.
“Wherever there’s money, there’s fraud,” said Zemanovic,
the Minneapolis parts recycler.

--With assistance from Albertina Torsoli, Henrique Almeida,
Anthony Palazzo, Kate Duffy, Mary Schlangenstein, Peter Robison,
Charlotte Ryan, Guy Johnson, Upmanyu Trivedi, Nicolle Yapur and
Patricia Laya.

[bigbill]

My son's (far right) first Flight Suit Friday in Pensacola. He'll head to Corpus Christi next month to fly the T-6.

[rwsaunders]

Howard Hughes’ plane had been in maintenance for quite a while and finally made it back into service for my ride home.

[Scott G.]

Remember never choose the fish for dinner.
(At your LBS now)

2023-10-14_15-47-35.jpg

[gregl]

Howard Hughes’ plane had been in maintenance for quite a while and finally made it back into service for my ride home.

Not a big fan of the current incarnation of AA, but I am fond of the retro liveries. Polished aluminum 1960s vintage AA was always my fave. I especially loved the Lockheed L188 Electra in the polished finish. Always heard it was a real “pilot’s airplane.”

Greg

[Saab2000]

Not a big fan of the current incarnation of AA, but I am fond of the retro liveries. Polished aluminum 1960s vintage AA was always my fave. I especially loved the Lockheed L188 Electra in the polished finish. Always heard it was a real “pilot’s airplane.”

Greg

My first ever commercial flight as a passenger was on AA. I assumed when I started flying I would either be with them or Swissair. I ended up with a close cousin and successor to the latter and have, in the past 30+ years been on AA airplanes only twice. Both were fine experiences and I thank for the for the free ride! ;-) But I am only peripherally aware of them today other than that they take forever to taxi to the runway and they never have their numbers when they call for taxi. How does that work? Today I couldn’t be further from either but I’m still drawing a paycheck in the business and for that I’m grateful. I’m nostalgic when I see my first employer at LAX or ORD or MIA and hope to dog I don’t have to taxi behind AA when I’m at any of those places! All kidding aside, they’re pros and know what they’re doing in the skies.

The most visible aircraft in that picture is the much maligned 737-8 MAX. I have now got many hundreds of hours on the variant and enjoy it very much. It’s a worthy successor to a 1960’s cousin of a 1950’s design!

[TonyP]

I just saw this.

[72gmc]

Silly question for the pilots here: are the seats in the cockpit in good shape, usually? Good support, well maintained? Or do you have to be ready for a seat that’s flattened out, and travel with a seat pad? I’m often padding the gap where lower back support should be, but I do fly economy.

[Saab2000]

Silly question for the pilots here: are the seats in the cockpit in good shape, usually? Good support, well maintained? Or do you have to be ready for a seat that’s flattened out, and travel with a seat pad? I’m often padding the gap where lower back support should be, but I do fly economy.

The seats are fine. Extremely adjustable. I don’t use any back support but I’ve seen some folks who use a supplemental thing for their back or butt. But the seats are generally quite comfortable and supportive. They are not at all like passenger seats.

[gregl]

Silly question for the pilots here: are the seats in the cockpit in good shape, usually? Good support, well maintained? Or do you have to be ready for a seat that’s flattened out, and travel with a seat pad? I’m often padding the gap where lower back support should be, but I do fly economy.

The seats are fine. Extremely adjustable. I don’t use any back support but I’ve seen some folks who use a supplemental thing for their back or butt. But the seats are generally quite comfortable and supportive. They are not at all like passenger seats.

My experiences were very similar. The seats in small, general aviation aircraft were nothing special, but they were quite nice in business turboprops and jets. The larger and longer-range jets had very expensive pilot seats with many adjustments. They were typically covered in sheepskin too. My longest duration in a pilot seat was about 6 hours and I don’t recall much (if any) discomfort.

In addition to seat adjustments, most large aircraft have adjustable rudder pedals too. This allows for pilots of varied heights and body proportions to not only be comfortable, but also achieve an optimum sight picture for flying the aircraft. All the jets I flew had a sight reference indicator or device that enabled the pilots to consistently put their seats in the same, optimum position. Here’s an interesting article on proper pilot seating positions: https://safetyfirst.airbus.com/are-you-properly-seated/

Greg

[72gmc]

Thanks, both of you. I’m glad you are comfortable!