this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
397 points (99.7% liked)

News

23413 readers
2694 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

all 32 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 99 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

At this point, if you told me that the Made in America logo on all the planes can be scratched off and it says Made in Myanmar underneath, I would absolutely not be surprised.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

This one got at least Airbus and Spirit as well and it's quite possible that it's related to the CFM / AOG Technics debacle out of the UK last year.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/engine-maker-cfm-says-up-96-planes-affected-by-fake-parts-probe-2023-09-20/

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (2 children)

CFM56 engines power the previous generation of Boeing 737s and about half the previous generation of Airbus A320s. These are gradually being upgraded but thousands remain in service.

The CFM56 is also used on Boeing P-8 maritime patrol planes sold to the United States and Britain, while the GE-built CF6 powers Boeing KC-767A tankers sold to Italy and Japan.

If you're right that's a big pile of doo-doo that's gonna hit Boeing hard.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

If you’re right that’s a big pile of doo-doo that’s gonna hit Boeing hard.

Damn, Boeing is really going to have to start offing a lot more whistleblowers.

[–] BingBong 1 points 5 months ago

Would this hot Boeing though or would that be tangential to GE whom actually builds the engines?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

This seems to only affect the A220, if Airbus is to be believed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I don't think that it's Myanmar here. Maybe China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_production_by_country

For titanium processing, this has global production in 2021 of 210,000 metric tons.

  1. China: 120,000
  2. Japan: 35,000
  3. Russia: 27,000
  4. Kazakhstan: 16,000
  5. Ukraine: 5,400
  6. Saudi Arabia: 3,700
  7. India: 250

For ore reserves:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233845/reserves-titanium-minerals-worldwide-by-country/

  1. China
  2. Australia
  3. India
  4. Canada
  5. Brazil
  6. Norway
  7. South Africa
  8. Mozambique
  9. Madagascar
  10. Ukraine
  11. United States

EDIT: Yeah, apparently it was China:

https://www.msn.com/en-my/news/other/boeing-and-airbus-planes-constructed-with-fake-chinese-titanium/ar-BB1ofaLP

Boeing and Airbus planes constructed with 'fake' Chinese titanium

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Made in America sourced from global parts.

Also the biggest failures were the made in America bits.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago (2 children)

This certainly sounds iffy.

I’ll say this: if this sort of thing poses an actual potential risk to passengers and crew, the people involved need to be given the harshest possible sentences. Take them out back and feed them into a woodchipper slowly if they wilfully endanger lives.

[–] Zipitydew 28 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The main thing here is that falsified paperwork means the source of the titanium is suspect. The raw titanium could have been sourced from a sanctioned nation. Or the subcontractor changed their titanium source and did not update their documentation.

Titanium was certainly supplied and used. The audit is questioning other aspects of where it came from.

[–] You999 3 points 5 months ago

Titanium is such a unique metal to machine that anyone could tell if it wasn't actually titanium. The only way you could get away with passing off another metal as titanium is if you had a massive fraud conspiracy spanning from the contractors/subcontractors all the way up to the aerospace manufacturers. Not to say it would be impossible but there would need to be a lot of corrupt people involved.

[–] ThrowawayPermanente -2 points 5 months ago

That's all well and good, I just want to know when I can start torturing my enemies to death

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

I'd prefer a 2 page spread of pictures in CEO magazine but I guess out back works.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (6 children)

How the heck does one not notice that a sheet of titanium is fake? That stuff is special, and if your sheets are suddenly totally different, one should notice that by a number of parameters.

[–] [email protected] 68 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The question is how they found out. Lucky audit or failing parts?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] explodicle 2 points 5 months ago

Yep I used to do AS9100 audits and that would have caught it.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Still titanium, but likely sourced differently and not batch tested to verify exact mechanical properties. Only time you'd tell the difference is when it fails prematurely.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Presumably there must be something physically different about the weaker titanium, like a different structure of all the crystals in it or something? Is there any way to measure that?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

Sometimes only by destructive testing. But either way, the high cost of the parts is the paper trail verifying the testing to a certain standard.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm aware that it can analyze chemical composition (I work in a factory that relates to such devices), but I'm unaware of them being able to detect things like weaknesses in a grain structure, the devices I'm familiar with at least would just tell you if a piece of titanium has other elements contaminating it. Unless there's more that can be done with them than I've had explained to me, which is possible

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I don't know about crystalline structure, but impurities are probably the most common way that a sample might fail testing. I'm sure that improper annealing or something would also cause problems, but I'm not a metallurgist so I can't say for sure.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

It’s not like they swapped titanium for balsa wood. The origin docs were falsified or missing, which could mean anything from they weren’t the right purity but were shipped anyway to they were imported from Russia and illegally bypassing sanctions.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

This is a supply chain integrity thing. They're not alleging that the titanium wasn't actually titanium (which as you said, would be noticed immediately).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How the heck does one not notice that a sheet of titanium is fake?

Contains a certain level of impurities that doesn't meet with guarantees?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Ok, that might be a thing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Right, but they were likely so cheap that it didn’t matter.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

if you want to buy some of this stuff hit me up I've got a guy