Airlines around the globe, manufacturers, and more suspect unapproved parts
The Suspect Unapproved Parts, from AOG Technics, were supplied globally. The crisis is confirmed to affect airlines globally. Airlines primarily use the GE/CFM Series 6, and CFM56, jet engines on medium range aircraft like the Boeing 737 and Airbus 32x. The newest generation of aircraft just now being shipped are not as likely to be involved in the crisis.
The six airlines publicly announcing “Suspect Unapproved Parts” are American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, TUI, and Virgin Australia. At least one American Airline’s plane had two unapproved parts and was pulled from service. Delta Airlines issued a statement that SUP had been installed in “a small number of engines” overhauled by an engine service provider. Delta discussed (in press reports) that up to 1% of its fleet of more than 2800 aircraft were affected. Two United airliners had questioned jet engine parts and were grounded. Southwest said it had replaced two low pressure turbine blades on a Boeing 737. Regular scheduled and chartered airlines have found suspected fake parts. TUI (European) has taken an airplane out of service for having used AOG Technics supplied parts.
Virgin Australia found, and grounded, an aircraft with a turbine blade with forged certificates and another aircraft with a questioned turbine nozzle. Military aircraft are not affected.
By July 28th Safran had sent a letter to all GE/CFM CFM56 Jet Engine customers. On July 31st GE Aerospace sent an “All Operators Wire” to all known CF6-series Jet Engine operators. On August 4th the UK CAA and European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) sent Safety Notice SN2023/004. The UK CAA said it was investigating the supply of a large number of ‘unapproved’ parts and required reporting to it and the EASA. On September 21st the USA Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sent out FAA Number 2023-AAE-EHL-20230801-713. The regulators issued “Suspect Unapproved Parts” notices that warn airlines to check their records and to report if any such parts are found.
From early September to the first week of October, 96 engines had used parts with forged ARC’s. GE/CFM has cited more than 52 CFM56 engine part numbers and two faked records for other CF6 engine components. This has caused inquiries for verifying parts certifications from 230 specific AOG Technics transactions. Some early finding raise the possibility of thousands of parts of many part numbers being affected. Hundreds of GE CF6 engine parts of many part numbers are likely to be affected. The Civil Aviation Administration of China announced a falsified filing had been found with 32 overhauled high pressure compressor stage 1 vanes for CFM56 engines. Questions apply to parts ordered from AOG Technics since February 2015.
The publicly acknowledged (Bloomberg) types of parts supplied by AOG Technics includes:
Shroud Bushings
Rotor Assembly Nuts
Combustion Case Bolts
Rotating Assembly Seals
High-Pressure Compressor Vanes
Friction Dampers
Low Pressure Compressor Vanes
with the total number of parts used per engine up to the high hundreds. There is no simple way to tell which parts might be suspect fakes and which ones genuine. For utmost safety even one, of any type of part, supplied by AOG Technics, used in a repair of an engine -- all would have to be replaced to be sure of removing fake parts. This puts a premium on replacing upwards of 150-220 of the same part in an engine regardless as many of these parts do not have serial numbers of other identifying marks that could be used to distinguish the fakes from genuine parts.
CFM has announced that forged ARC forms for four parts were installed into 16 engines by CFM engine service operations.
More segments in our series on The Fake Airplane Parts Can Kill Crisis at
http://www.ekalore.com
For how to keep a data crisis from your enterprise contact Ekalore at
http://www.ekalore.com
Comments