The Federal Aviation Administration said it would investigate allegations that titanium had entered the supply chain via falsified documents.
Boeing and Airbus, the two biggest commercial airline makers, may have used titanium sold using fake documents, according to evidence from a supplier that has triggered a Federal Aviation Administration investigation.
The FAA said in a statement to NBC News on Friday morning it would look into allegations from Spirit Aerosystems that the two aviation giants used titanium in their planes that came with paperwork verifying its authenticity that could have been falsified.
The news adds to a troubled period for Boeing, which is the subject of ongoing federal investigations for alleged safety problems. But the news also brings its fierce rival, France-headquartered Airbus, into the wider scrutiny the aviation industry is facing.
It’s not that the titanium metal is fake, it’s probably real. By “fake” what they mean is that the part made with the titanium isn’t what the documentation for it claims. It may have been made by a different company than what the documentation says or it may not have been tested in the way that the documentation says.
Every last piece, down to the tiniest screw, in a commercial airplane has a paper trail and for these parts someone is saying that the paper trail has been falsified. That’s the “fake” part.
The question is how they found out. Lucky audit or failing parts?
Probably someone in QA was doing a spot check and was unable to verify the documentation from an upstream manufacturer for the materials. For example, the mine the titanium was sourced from may have had a specific ore lot listed an absurd number of times or the foundry was listed as performing material analysis done in house for procedures they normally would be required to have done by an independent lab.
Yep I used to do AS9100 audits and that would have caught it.