Unapproved aircraft parts are aircraft parts not approved by civil aviation authorities for installation on type certified aircraft.
For example, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) defines a "standard part" as a part produced in accordance with government regulations, and it defines an "approved part" as a "standard part" that is in accordance with a specific set of criteria and specifications. [1] The FAA standards for approved parts are in FAR 21.305. In the United States parts may be approved through a Parts Manufacturer Approval (PMA), with type certification procedures through approval from the agency's approval, through Technical Standard Orders (TSOs), and from conforming to recognized specifications from the aviation industry. [2]
Parts manufactured without an aviation authority's approval are described as "unapproved"; they may be inferior counterfeits, have been used beyond their time limits, have been previously approved but not properly returned to service, be stolen, come with fraudulent labels, production overruns that were not sold with the agency's permission, and those that are untraceable. [3] The parts are cheaper to buy and more profitable to sell than approved parts. [4] Unapproved parts have been found on both civilian and military aircraft, [5] and faulty ones have caused hundreds of incidents and crashes, some fatal, with about 24 crashes between 2010 and 2016. [4]
Most industries are plagued by counterfeit and bogus parts of inferior quality, [6] but the potential consequences of failure are far less serious.
"Counterfeit parts" are those not made by the manufacturer they claim to be from. They are usually made of inferior materials by inadequate processes and not tested, designed only to bear a close resemblance to genuine parts. [3] The term "bogus parts" can loosely refer to various categories of unapproved parts. [3] "Life-limited" and "time-expired" parts are legitimate parts that have been used beyond their design lifespan. Some parts which are life-limited or of unknown condition are taken from scrapyards, and illegally installed on aircraft. [2] A used part may be legally salvaged, but supporting information must be supplied. [7] Some unapproved parts come from genuine manufacturers' production lines; some of these may simply be airworthy production overruns, but others may be defective samples that failed required testing. [7]
Boeing has stated that mechanical parts, electronic parts and materials have been counterfeited. Physical parts include bolts, nuts, and rivets. Electronic parts include resistors, capacitors, and integrated circuits. Materials include composite chemicals, steel, and titanium. [8] In 1996 unapproved parts were found to originate from sources such as counterfeiters, thieves, "strip and dip" operations which hide defects with metal plating, and from production overruns. [7]
The crash of Partnair Flight 394 in 1989 resulted from the installation of counterfeit aircraft parts. [7] Counterfeit bolts, attaching the vertical stabilizer of a Convair CV-580 to the fuselage, wore down excessively, allowing the tail to vibrate to the extent that it eventually broke off.
In 1990, US President George H.W. Bush appointed Mary Schiavo as the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Schiavo began campaigns to curb the sale of unapproved parts and led subsequent investigations. By 1996, the investigations resulted in hundreds of criminal convictions, restitution, fines totalling about US$47 million, and prison sentences of up to five years. [7]
In August 1993, a group of criminals stole a cockpit computer from a Carnival Airlines aircraft at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. During the day the criminals contacted "potential buyers" at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. The "buyers" were actually Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents performing "Operation Skycrook," a sting operation to deter thieves of commercial aircraft parts. [9]
In 1995, after the crash of American Airlines Flight 965, scavengers took cockpit avionics, engine thrust reversers, and other parts from the crash site by helicopter. Many of the stolen parts appeared for sale in the Greater Miami area. [10] In response, American Airlines published a 14-page list of the parts missing from the crashed aircraft, including the serial numbers. [7]
An FAA study concluded that, from May 1973 to April 1996, unapproved parts contributed to 174 aircraft accidents and minor incidents, causing 39 injuries and 17 fatalities. None of the accidents and incidents in the study involved major commercial airlines. Some critics, including William Cohen, a member of the U.S. Senate from Maine, argued that the FAA may have understated the role of unapproved parts of some accidents because the agency did not want to take the responsibility of regulating the aircraft parts industry. James Frisbee, who retired in 1992 as the quality control head of Northwest Airlines, argued that unapproved parts may have been a factor in far more accidents than the numbers stated on U.S. federal accident and incident records. [7]
The United States Congress passed the Aircraft Safety Act of 2000, allowing the government to target the sale and use of unapproved parts. [11]
Around 2003, the U.S. state of Florida was an international center for the vending of unapproved aircraft parts. [12]
Old and faulty parts scavenged from scrapped aircraft were sold illegally as new parts in Italy from the late 1990s, and were reported in 2002 to be possibly linked to up to ten air crashes. [13] Unapproved parts are considered to have played a role in about 24 crashes that killed seven people and injured 18 between 2010 and 2016. [4]
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic management, certification of personnel and aircraft, setting standards for airports, and protection of U.S. assets during the launch or re-entry of commercial space vehicles. Powers over neighboring international waters were delegated to the FAA by authority of the International Civil Aviation Organization.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and incidents, certain types of highway crashes, ship and marine accidents, pipeline incidents, bridge failures, and railroad accidents. The NTSB is also in charge of investigating cases of hazardous materials releases that occur during transportation. The agency is based in Washington, D.C. It has four regional offices, located in Anchorage, Alaska; Denver, Colorado; Ashburn, Virginia; and Seattle, Washington. The agency also operates a national training center at its Ashburn facility.
Alaska Airlines Flight 261 was an Alaska Airlines flight of a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 plane that crashed into the Pacific Ocean on January 31, 2000, roughly 2.7 miles north of Anacapa Island, California, following a catastrophic loss of pitch control, killing all 88 people on board: two pilots, three cabin crew members, and 83 passengers. The flight was a scheduled international passenger flight from Licenciado Gustavo Díaz Ordaz International Airport in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico, to Seattle–Tacoma International Airport in Seattle, Washington, United States, with an intermediate stop at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, California.
American Airlines Flight 965 was a regularly scheduled flight from Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida, to Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport in Cali, Colombia. On December 20, 1995, the Boeing 757-200 flying this route crashed into a mountain in Buga, Colombia, killing 151 of the 155 passengers and all eight crew members.
Mary Fackler Schiavo is the former Inspector General of the United States Department of Transportation (DOT), where for six years she withstood pressure from within DOT and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as she sought to expose and correct problems she perceived at the agencies. In 1997, after her stormy tenure at the DOT, Schiavo wrote Flying Blind, Flying Safe, which summed up her numerous concerns about the FAA's systemic flaws.
An engineered materials arrestor system, engineered materials arresting system (EMAS), or arrester bed is a bed of engineered materials built at the end of a runway to reduce the severity of the consequences of a runway excursion. Engineered materials are defined in FAA Advisory Circular No 150/5220-22B as "high energy absorbing materials of selected strength, which will reliably and predictably crush under the weight of an aircraft". While the current technology involves lightweight, crushable concrete blocks, any material that has been approved to meet the FAA Advisory Circular can be used for an EMAS. The purpose of an EMAS is to stop an aircraft overrun with no human injury and minimal aircraft damage. The aircraft is slowed by the loss of energy required to crush the EMAS material. An EMAS is similar in concept to the runaway truck ramp or race circuit gravel trap, made of gravel or sand. It is intended to stop an aircraft that has overshot a runway when there is an insufficient free space for a standard runway safety area (RSA). Multiple patents have been issued on the construction and design on the materials and process.
United Airlines Flight 297 was a scheduled flight from Newark International Airport to Atlanta that crashed 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Baltimore on November 23, 1962, killing all 17 people on board. An investigation concluded that the aircraft, a Vickers Viscount 745D turboprop airliner, had struck at least two whistling swans, which caused severe damage to the plane, resulting in a loss of control.
Partnair Flight 394 was a chartered flight that crashed on 8 September 1989 off the coast of Denmark, 18 km north of Hirtshals. All fifty passengers and five crew members on board the aircraft died, making this the deadliest disaster in Danish aviation history. The crash was caused by use of counterfeit aircraft parts in repairs and maintenance.
Partnair A/S was a Norwegian charter airline which operated from 1971 to 1989. During the later 1980s it was Norway's fifth-largest airline by revenue, operating a fleet of three Convair CV-580 and six Beechcraft Super King Air. The airline was based at Oslo Airport, Fornebu, as well as operating a base at Stavanger Airport, Sola.
An aircraft part is an article or component approved for installation on a type-certificated aircraft. Approval for these parts is derived from the jurisdictions of the countries that an aircraft is based. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration oversees the approval for these parts under Federal Aviation Regulation Part 21.
A runway excursion is a runway safety incident where an aircraft makes an inappropriate exit from the runway. Runway excursions include runway overruns, where an aircraft is unable to stop before it reaches the end of the runway. Runway excursions can happen because of pilot error, poor weather, or a fault with the aircraft.
In aviation, a terrain awareness and warning system (TAWS) is generally an on-board system aimed at preventing unintentional impacts with the ground, termed "controlled flight into terrain" accidents, or CFIT. The specific systems currently in use are the ground proximity warning system (GPWS) and the enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS). The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) introduced the generic term TAWS to encompass all terrain-avoidance systems that meet the relevant FAA standards, which include GPWS, EGPWS and any future system that might replace them.
A runway safety area (RSA) or runway end safety area (RESA) is defined as "the surface surrounding the runway prepared or suitable for reducing the risk of damage to airplanes in the event of an undershoot, overshoot, or excursion from the runway."
The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 was an act of the United States Congress, signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, that created the Federal Aviation Agency and abolished its predecessor, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA). The act empowered the FAA to oversee and regulate safety in the airline industry and the use of American airspace by both military aircraft and civilian aircraft.
Flying Blind, Flying Safe is a non-fiction book about the American airline industry and Federal Aviation Administration, written by Mary Schiavo with Sabra Chartrand. The book was first published in March 1997 in hardcover format by Avon Books. An updated paperback edition was published on April 1, 1998. Schiavo is a former Inspector General of the United States Department of Transportation, and Chartrand a journalist for The New York Times. Schiavo was Inspector General of the United States Department of Transportation for six years, and resigned in 1996 shortly after the ValuJet Flight 592 airline crash in the Florida Everglades. She became a whistleblower and was highly critical of the airline industry and its relationship with aviation safety agencies in the United States federal government.
The Modification and Replacement Parts Association is the Washington, D.C.-based trade association that represents manufacturers of government-approved after market aircraft parts. These aircraft parts are often known as PMA parts, from the acronym for Parts Manufacturer Approval. The manufacture of PMA parts is regulated in the United States by the Federal Aviation Administration.
On 22 December 2009, an American Airlines Boeing 737-800, operating American Airlines Flight 331 and carrying 148 passengers and six crew, overran runway 12 on landing at Kingston in poor weather. The plane continued on the ground outside the airport perimeter and broke apart on the beach, causing injuries.
The Boeing 737 MAX passenger airliner was grounded worldwide between March 2019 and December 2020 – longer in many jurisdictions – after 346 people died in two crashes, Lion Air Flight 610 on October 29, 2018, and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10, 2019. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) resisted grounding the aircraft until March 13, 2019, when it received evidence of accident similarities. By then, 51 other regulators had already grounded the plane, and by March 18, 2019, all 387 aircraft in service were grounded.
The Organization Designation Authorization (ODA) program is the means by which the FAA grants designee authority to organizations or companies. The regulations addressing the ODA program are found in Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations part 183, subpart D, sections 183.41 through 813.67.
The Boeing 737 MAX was initially certified in 2017 by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). However, global regulators grounded the plane in 2019 following fatal crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. Both crashes were linked to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), a new automatic flight control feature. Investigations in both crashes determined that Boeing and the FAA favored cost-saving solutions, but ultimately produced a flawed design of the MCAS instead. The FAA's Organization Designation Authorization program, allowing manufacturers to act on its behalf, was also questioned for weakening its oversight of Boeing.
