Invidious SUPs just got harder to detect-what to do?
Below are two articles conveying the highest levels of aviation safety warnings— EASA, FAA, GE Aerospace, SAFRAN and others have identified a number of parts that have been incorporated in CFM 56 engines and these bogus products are not and/or cannot not be proved to be AIRWORTHY!!!
Next to the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “INSIDIOUS” is a montage of Suspected Unapproved Parts (SUPs), like the above tableau of aircraft parts that look to be airworthy—but are NOT. There are few things more subtly deleterious to aviation safety than an SUP; the fake version of the real component appears to have the form, fit and functions identical to the one included in the original Type Certificate (TC). Laser measurements and reverse engineering make it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to differentiate the real article from the ersatz by standard testing.
When the FAA announced an initial SUP Program in 1993 to minimize safety risks posed by the entry of “unapproved” parts into the U.S. aviation inventory and their installation on aircraft, the founders added “CRADLE-TO-GRAVE” DOCUMENTATION as an essential element of a part’s airworthiness—paperwork from the OEM (not always the TC holder) and all subsequent movements of the items must be rigorously scrutinized to trace its bona fides. Review of these documents requires a PHD level education.1
These reports acknowledge that the SUPs found included CREDIBLE PACKAGES OF TRACER PAPERWORK THAT REQUIRED EXTENSIVE RESEARCH TO DETECT THAT THEY WERE NOT RELIABLE PROOF. The FAA guidance on SUPs is pages long, not easily ingested into the examining eyes of the Inventory auditors (airlines and intermediaries); so, a recurrent education would be advisable. Some Subject Matter Experts on SUPs bemoan the transfer of SUP responsibility in 2018 from an organization with airworthiness experience to an office with whistleblower/auditing focus.
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Industry Assessing Scope, Risk Of Unapproved CFM56, CF6 Parts Documentation
Sean Broderick Thierry Dubois September 01, 2023
Credit: Sean Broderick / AWST
Regulators and engine suppliers GE Aerospace and Safran are working to verify the scope and risk of an apparent records-falsification scheme that has so far turned up more than 70 parts sold by a UK-based parts broker with forged airworthiness documentation.
At least 74 instances of falsified release certificates and related documents have been linked to parts sold by AOG Technics. In 72 cases, they were European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) Form 1s attached to CFM56-5 and -7 parts. Two cases of unverified FAA 8130-3s provided with GE Aviation CF6 parts have also turned up.
“It has been established that numerous authorized release certificates for parts supplied via AOG Technics have been forged,” EASA said in a statement to Aviation Week. “In each case, the approved organization identified as the originator on the certificate has confirmed that they did not produce the certificate, and that they were not the originator of the part.”
EASA, in an early August suspected unapproved parts (SUPs) alert, asked anyone with material supplied by AOG Technics to inspect related approval documentation and verify with issuers—in this case, the manufacturers—that the paperwork is valid. Any parts with questionable paperwork should be removed from aircraft or spares pools and quarantined.
The issue came to light in late July when CFM International sent a bulletin to CFM56 operators warning them of reports of fake paperwork accompanying new parts. An unnamed “MRO provider” flagged a Form 1 allegedly issued by Safran and included with a new CFM56 part sold by AOG Technics. Safran reviewed the paperwork and confirmed it was not authentic.
The provider shared more Form 1s and “memo of shipment” documents supposedly generated by Safran and distributed with parts sold by AOG Technics. Safran determined that paperwork was fake as well.
A second unnamed “company”—the bulletin does not specify if it was another third-party repair shop or an airline—came forward with six Form 1s it received with new CFM parts sold by AOG Technics. Safran determined these too were fake, according to the bulletin.
Another MRO provider found similar problems with 8130-3s included with CF6 parts bought from AOG Technics, the bulletin said. GE confirmed those records, allegedly generated by GE Engine Services Distribution, were falsified.
A preliminary review turned up 30 parts with fake records between the issue’s discovery and the CFM bulletin’s issuance nearly four weeks ago. Bloomberg was first to report the bulletin’s existence.
So far, confirmed cases of records falsification are limited to CFM and GE engines. OTHER MANUFACTURERS ARE NOT TAKING ANY CHANCES, HOWEVER. PRATT & WHITNEY CONFIRMED IT IS LOOKING INTO THE MATTER ON SOME OF ITS LEGACY PLATFORMS.
“While we are not aware of any parts supplied by AOG Technics to our customers, we are investigating the situation and supporting the FAA as they look into the matter,” a spokesman for Pratt parent RTX, formerly Raytheon Technologies, told Aviation Week. “We have issued a communication to V2500 and PW4000 operators asking them to notify us if they have received parts directly or indirectly from AOG Technics.”
An airline source confirmed the Pratt notice and said Rolls-Royce has issued a similar one.
AS OF LATE SEPT. 1, THE FAA HAD NOT ISSUED A SUPS NOTICE ON THE CFM56 OR CF6 PARTS. THE U.S. AGENCY DID NOT IMMEDIATELY RESPOND TO AN AVIATION WEEK QUERY.
AOG Technics could not be reached for comment. The company’s website and LinkedIn pages appeared to be offline Sept. 1.
Within days of the July 28 bulletin, CFM and GE filed formal SUPs notification with regulators, including EASA and the FAA, and updated customers on the situation. EASA and the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) then issued public suspected unapproved parts (SUPs) notifications alerting industry to the issue and signifying that formal investigations were underway.
“Occurrence reports have been submitted to [EASA] indicating that several CFM56 engine parts distributed by AOG Technics have been supplied with a falsified authorized release certificate (ARC),” EASA wrote its Aug. 4 notice. “To date, AOG Technics has not provided information on the source of the parts, or of the falsified ARCs.”
The CAA notice said “some” parts ended up on UK-registered aircraft but did not provide details.
EASA on Sept. 1 confirmed that AOG Technics still has not supplied verified documentation or “information detailing the actual origin of the parts,” a spokesperson said. “EASA is therefore unable to determine whether the parts are airworthy, and so the SUP notice is recommending that parts found to have a falsified release certificate are replaced.”
The affected suppliers issued their own updates and clarified that AOG Technics is not an authorized new-parts distributor for any CFM, GE, or Safran products.
“We are fully engaged with regulators to support their investigation of falsified airworthiness documents accompanying parts sold by AOG Technics,” a CFM spokesperson said. “AOG technics has no affiliation with either GE aerospace, safran aircraft engines, or CFM. We proactively alerted our customers and maintenance shops, and we continue to work with our customers to assess the authenticity of documentation for parts they acquired directly or indirectly from AOG Technics.”
AOG Technics does not repair engines. A broker, it sources parts—either new or reconditioned—from the open market and sells them to maintenance providers, including overhaul shops and airlines.
CFM is the victim, the CFM spokesperson said, insisting the company has no contractual relationship with AOG Technics.
Whether parts flying on in-service aircraft poses any flight-safety risks has yet to be determined, the CFM spokesperson said.
Regardless of the parts’ condition, absent verified airworthiness release paperwork that traces the material back to its source, the parts will be considered unusable unless they are validated via approved processes. In the U.S., for example, repair stations can validate parts that do not have 8130-3s.
—With reporting by Jens Flottau
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Fake spare parts were supplied to fix top-selling jet engines
Julie Johnsson, Ryan Beene, Siddharth Philip
Bloomberg
EXCERPTED
…European aviation regulators have determined that an obscure London-based company supplied bogus parts for repairs of jet engines that power many older-generation Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 planes.
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The SPREAD OF UNDOCUMENTED OR POTENTIALLY FAKED PARTS into the engine supply chain is RARE AND TREATED WITH UTMOST URGENCY in an industry where every component requires verified provenance to ensure aircraft safety – it’s impossible to know whether uncertified parts will be as durable under stress. Manufacturers and regulators sounded the alarm weeks ago, triggering a global scramble to trace parts supplied by AOG Technics and identify affected aircraft.
It’s unclear how many fake parts may have been installed or how many aircraft might be affected. The CFM56, the world’s best-selling jet engine, is installed on thousands of narrow-body planes that are a staple of the global fleet.
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“THE DOCUMENTATION OF PARTS IS A VERY CRITICAL ISSUE,” said Klaus Mueller, a senior adviser at AeroDynamic Advisory and a former senior executive at MTU Aero Engines and Deutsche Lufthansa’s maintenance arm. “The industry is taking this topic very, very seriously.”
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The company at the center of the controversy isn’t an approved vendor for CFM or GE, the CFM spokesman said. GE and Safran each sent cease-and-desist letters to AOG Technics, he said.
AOG Technics didn’t respond to calls and messages from Bloomberg. Its website describes the company as a “leading global aircraft support provider” and a source of new and “serviceable” parts for a variety of engines that power 737 and A320 models. The company said it had warehouse operations in London, Frankfurt, Miami and Singapore.
According to the U.K.’s Companies House website, AOG Technics was incorporated in 2015 and is majority owned by 35-year-old Jose Zamora Yrala, whose nationality is listed as British on some forms and Venezuelan on others. The company listed current assets of £2.58 million ($3.27 million) as of February 2022. Bloomberg News was unable to reach Yrala.
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