Escalating scandal grips airlines including American and Southwest, wreaking havoc on flight delays as nearly 100 planes find fake parts from company that vanished overnight
fortune.com
The mysterious London-based AOG Technics is accused of falsifying paperwork for plane parts that ended up being sold around the world.

Escalating scandal grips airlines including American and Southwest, as nearly 100 planes find fake parts from company with fake employees that vanished overnight::Why are so many flights getting canceled or delayed? Blame a mysterious British supplier accused of falsified documents for plane components.

  • peanutyam@lemmy.worldEnglish
    451·
    1 year ago

    I am an Aerospace Engineer (I was an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer by trade prior to going to University) and I have spent the last 30 years in the airline industry….it isn’t as bad as you are allegedly making it out to be….pilots are not engineers either……

    Experience from the 60’s and 70’s isn’t really relevant to today’s industry- I started in the early 90’s and it’s massively different today from back then….so your point is?

    I am also based in Australia so that might also make a bit of a difference because we have had no airline crashes in this country and we have a very strict Potentially Unwanted Parts (PUP’s) system and other checks and balances that because we are under EASA based regulations and not FAA ones (who, by the way allowed the PMA part system….where parts are no longer required to be manufactured by the OEM for aircraft….and I’ve got plenty of stories about that nonsense…)

    So yeah…. I quite happily still fly everywhere around the world….

    • scvEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I only understood some words of what you said, but I’m curious, isn’t there a site to verify the origin of all PMA parts? The FAA seems to be behind when it comes to modern information technology, for example sectional charts don’t appear to have a digital format, which is mind boggling. I understand being conservative for safety purposes, I do SAR so I bring paper maps when I hike, but the FAA seems hostile to technology at times.

    • LillyPip@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      My dad is both a pilot and engineer. I’m aware not all pilots are. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear. If you’re in the industry, this will dox me, but my dad designed the Taylorcraft tri-gear (the F-22; there are still Taylorcrafts out there with rivets I put in them in the early 80s, because I basically grew up in the factory), and converted the original WACO biplane blueprints from the Smithsonian to modern specs so they could be manufactured again. He also designed the WACO Super class and their conversion to sea floats about ten years ago or so (the YMF-5; as an aerospace engineer, I’m sure you know that’s not a simple engineering task). He designed and engineered all the features this video from last year talks about; I don’t mean ancient history.

      He’s currently 88 and still works full-time at WACO. He knows what he’s talking about. He still travels to the EU about every year for WACO. His knowledge is not outdated.

      My point is just to relay what I’ve heard from my dad on this topic for US airlines specifically, and that I trust his opinion personally. Nothing more.

      e: sorry for all the edits, my Lemmy client hates me. FWIW, one of my dad’s current titles at WACO is ‘Airworthiness Manager’. You can find him on LinkedIn. Just search ‘waco classic airworthiness manager’.