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.
By Lori Aratani
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.
That lack of automation made it more “difficult and onerous” to investigate AOG when it became apparent the paperwork it provided to its customers was fraudulent, the report noted. AOG did not respond to requests for comment.
Other safeguards also failed, according to the report. For example, an independent accreditor certified that AOG met voluntary standards for aircraft parts distributors, but investigators found the company, which was founded in 2015, had allegedly forged records as far back as 2018, the report said. Records “bore fake signatures of actual Safran Aircraft Engines employees, while others were supposedly signed off by individuals who no longer worked at the company,” the report said.
In other instances, “the names of other signatories appeared to be wholly fabricated, complete with fake LinkedIn profiles for would-be AOG employees featuring stock photos,” the report said.
In December, the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office, part of the U.K.’s criminal justice system, raided the home of AOG Technics founder Jose Alejandro Zamora Yrala. A spokesperson for the office said the investigation is ongoing.
“We were able to quickly ring-fence the problem last year, but aviation safety demands not stopping there,” Phil Wickler, GE Aerospace’s chief transformation officer and one of the coalition’s members, said in a statement about the case.
While aviation regulators, manufacturers and suppliers have systems in place to root out fraud, the increasing complexity of the supply chain means they must be continually re-examined, Porcari said.
“The gold standard for safety in the past is not going to be the gold standard in the future,” he added. “This kind of ongoing vigilance is essential to the industry.”
The coalition offered 13 recommendations for strengthening supply chain oversight, including digitizing documents and signatures, encouraging companies to work only with accredited suppliers, and developing systems where companies can report concerns or raise questions about specific parts distributors. Though their work focused mainly on aircraft engines, coalition members said their findings are applicable to other parts of the aviation manufacturing system.
Though not covered in the coalition’s report, there have been other recent incidents in which questionable materials made their way into the aviation supply chain. In June, the Federal Aviation Administration announced that it was investigating how titanium with falsified documentation ended up being used by Spirit AeroSystems, a key supplier to both Boeing and Airbus. Both manufacturers said the issue did not jeopardize safety of their jets.
The coalition included members from across the industry — American and United Airlines, engine manufacturers, Safran, GE Aerospace and Standard Aero, Airbus and Boeing. Though the recommendations are voluntary, Sumwalt said some companies are already adopting them.
Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report
