- Distributor AOG Technics is accused of a years-long scheme of selling fake aircraft parts to airlines.
- Major US airlines say they found bogus components sourced from the company on their CFM56 engines.
- The plot involved acquiring used parts, restoring them, and then selling them with forged paperwork, according to legal and regulatory filings.
Global airlines have been flying with fake engine parts for years — and the industry is just now finding out.
Earlier this year, a routine inspection of the world's best-selling jet engine uncovered an alarming scheme involving a London distributor called AOG Technics.
The plot was uncovered at TAP Air Portugal's maintenance subsidiary in June when engineers noticed one of the "new" spare parts for a CFM56 engine appeared older than what the paperwork indicated, Bloomberg reported.
Workers flagged the inconsistency to French manufacturer Safran, which co-produces the CFM56 with General Electric as a 50/50 joint venture called CFM International. The engine is used on Airbus and Boeing planes.
Safran confirmed the fraudulent documentation, launching an investigation that found thousands of parts across at least 126 CFM56 engines were sold without a legitimate airworthiness certificate.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency confirmed the bogus parts in an August regulatory filing. The agency quickly warned operators, shops, and distributors to check their records of CFM56 parts supplied from AOG and remove any in use.
Carriers including United, Southwest, Delta, and American have all since identified illegitimate parts flying on their passenger jetliners.
American, Delta, and Southwest told Insider that a small number of aircraft contained the falsified parts, and each has been taken out of service for replacement. United confirmed the same in September after revealing it found fake parts on its planes.
CFM itself also fell victim to the plot after buying parts from AOG indirectly and using them on its engines, according to Reuters.
The engine maker filed a lawsuit against AOG in September, and the distributor has since submitted documents detailing its sales history after being ordered to by a London judge, according to the Wall Street Journal.
An attorney for CFM International told Reuters that AOG Technics had created a "deliberate, dishonest, and sophisticated scheme to deceive the market with falsified documents on an industrial scale."
None of the AOG-supplied parts have a strict lifespan in which they must be replaced after a certain number of flights, Bloomberg reported. But the scandal could potentially impact safety as it's impossible to know how uncertified parts will hold up in extreme conditions.
For example, uncertified bolts and brackets caused a Convair CV-580 turboprop to crash in Europe in 1989, killing 55 people.
How to fool an airline
While companies scramble to find the fake parts, investigators are trying to figure out how the scheme happened.
AOG was founded eight years ago by entrepreneur Jose Alejandro Zamora Yrala, according to the WSJ. The company operated as a middleman between engine shops.
According to Bloomberg, the company started the scheme as far back as 2018, acquiring used parts that would then be restored and sold with fraudulent documentation — including forged signatures —that indicated they were fresh from the factory.
This isn't a new strategy. The Federal Aviation Administration launched a voluntary audit program for suppliers after some 120 convictions involving fake parts were made between 1990 and 1996.
The FAA program helps accredit sellers without using agency resources, but the lack of oversight opens a hole that third-party sellers like AOG can exploit — especially as the industry continues to face staffing and part shortages amid the post-pandemic travel boom.
"We were busting people and sending them to prison 20 years ago for this," former Department of Transportation Inspector General Mary Schiavo told Bloomberg. "It's the same old scheme."