Ryanair has found “fake parts” in two of its aircraft engines during scheduled maintenance checks, becoming the latest airline to be impacted by a brewing scandal.
The parts were discovered during checks in Texas and Brazil over the past few months and have since been removed from the engines, the low cost carrier’s chief executive Michael O’Leary told Bloomberg News.
It comes as the global aviation industry is grappling with a fake parts scandal that has left airlines and regulators scrambling to assess engines and trace equipment.
Aviation regulators have accused an obscure London company called AOG Technics of supplying thousands of engine parts with faked certification documents for Airbus and Boeing models,
Anyone who thinks that it’s only the one company. AOG, that’s been fiddling the docs is mad. Insane. There’s simply too much money in it for only one fiddle. Thei airlines aren;t in on it – they know that if they were their insurance disappears. But the supply chain? Only the one?
Larff.
Just about to get on a Ryanair flight to Vienna…
Another cost of globalisation that economists managed to miss……….hey lets outsource all our manufacturing to the arse end of Shitholistan, no one there ever gets up to anything illegal or shady at all……
Economists – know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I seem to recall, 40 or more years ago, that if a BA plane landed in the Far East and needed a part it would be flown out on the next BA flight from Europe; never sourced locally.
Not to mention a cost of regulation and of compliance.
There’s an old aviation joke that goes (along the lines of): “An aeroplane shall not fly until the weight of (paper) documentation exceeds the maximum take-off weight of said aeroplane”
So the paperwork trails which are supposed to ensure this sort of thing doesn’t happen are not very effective, are they?
“So the paperwork trails which are supposed to ensure this sort of thing doesn’t happen are not very effective, are they?”
No more effective than they were at keeping horse meat out of ‘beef’ lasagnas. Classic case of ‘The paperwork says its OK, so it is’.
This is a good example of the whats been discussed at length over at Samizdata about the whole ‘intelligence vs common sense’ debate (triggered by the ‘Remainers are cleverer’ article). The high intellect people who run things see a licencing regime as great, to produce X you need a licence, the rules of the licence say standards A, B and C must be adhered to, job done. Slightly less intelligent people with a bit of nous understand that if the difference between a highly expensive aircraft part and a bit of worthless scrap metal is a piece of paper then there’s going to be a market for bits of paper saying said scrap metal is indeed an expensive aircraft part.
Come on. Air Crash Investigation must be running out of stories. They need some new ones.
Worked in aerospace 30 years ago and this was an issue then, one of the most secure parts of the site was the warehouse for pasta failing inspection waiting to be destroyed as that was considered a source for black market parts, there was an attempt to break into it while I was working there.
All this leads to Ronald Reagan’s old dictum, “trust but verify”. Most manufacturers see Quality Control as a cost, not a revenue center. And it is, right up until that billion dollar lawsuit lands at your front door.
It’s another example of rent seeking.
Make a part with the relevant documentation for £X.
Same part, made on the same machine without documentation is £X minus 50%!
Is it any less safe for not having the piece of paper with the bureaucratic stamp? Handily it keeps out smaller, cheaper suppliers who can’t afford the regulatory overhead.
And no, I don’t want planes falling out of the sky, but let’s be real. Unless it’s the fan blades then the chance of catastrophic failure are low. Even in the case of fan blades, we’ve had these go even when produced by “reputable” sources – https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/rolls-royce-explains-problem-with-trent-1000/