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FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

nytimes.com

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Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#201

Post by samatman »

rootusrootus wrote: post #148
samatman wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is clearly the case. The phrase "counterfeit titanium" doesn't even make sense, because something counterfeit has the wrong provenance, and the provenance of an alloy or element isn't a meaningful property. You could say "counterfeit Krugerrands", but "counterfeit gold" doesn't make sense. Now, it could be ersatz titanium, except that the article specifically says that it isn't: > Spirit added that “more th…

> Russian titanium, which is produced in such quantity Russia is what, third on the list of countries by titanium production? [0] Japan produces more. China produces quite a lot more. It should not be -that- hard to avoid using Russian titanium. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_production_by_country

It would be more difficult to avoid, if suppliers were forging certificates to claim that Russian titanium was coming from somewhere else.

Which they might do, if sanctions meant that the titanium was cheaper, and they could pocket the difference.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#202

Post by dgoodell »

nucleardog wrote: post #156
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FAA has their hands full investigating problems _after_ they become problems The FAA is constantly auditing, certifying and testing airmen, airplanes and plants. They have their hands full. But it's totally incorrect to say they're an ex post facto investigations agency.

> The FAA is constantly auditing, certifying and testing airmen, airplanes and plants. Are they? Much of the work that would be done to inspect and certify the planes being manufactured was outsourced to the manufacturers to increase efficiency. They build their planes, inspect their planes, inspect and approve modifications and major repairs to their planes, and issue their own airworthiness certificates for their p…

I think the FAA generally performs audits, not inspections.

They usually make sure the paperwork is in order. Less likely that they make sure the paperwork is actually correct, and vastly less likely that they make sure that the actual things happening in the shop are correctly done.

I worked in an FAA repair station that repaired commercial jet engine parts. We always got the same FAA inspector every year. We never seemed nervous when he would show up.

The only auditor that seemed to really be digging to find stuff was the GE financial auditor to make sure they were getting their repair royalties.

Oh and one time an auditor for an airline snuck in and stole one of his airline’s parts, or something like that. He was making the point that we had zero access control and literally anyone could just walk into the building.

They should really start testing the employees. It doesn’t matter what the paperwork says if the employees are incompetent.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#203

Post by vic-traill »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #87
TomatoCo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To belabor the point and repeat a bit from Wikipedia, this was bar-none the absolute perfect flight crew possible. A flight crew with over 65000 hours experience and, riding as a passenger, a training pilot with a further 23000 who had specifically practiced this exact failure (total loss of hydraulics) after a lost craft four years prior. For further reading, https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fields-of-fortune-the…

Reminds me of the Gimli Glider, and the incredible coincidence of having an experienced glider pilot as the Captain of that flight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

>Reminds me of the Gimli Glider

This was a very Canadian accident, in that they ran out of fuel halfway through their cross-country flight because of (in the end) conversion errors in calculating the required fuel amount for the then-new metric 767. Canada was still in the conversion process from imperial to metric, and the airline industry was a relative latecomer to that change.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#204

Post by Retric »

kube-system wrote: post #198
ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Poor design leading to the loss of all flight control surfaces in the event of an uncontained engine failure is what led to their deaths.

> The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the inadequate consideration given to human factors limitations 1n the inspection and quality control procedures used by United Airlines' engine overhaul facility which resulted in the failure to detect a fatigue crack originating from a previously undetected metallurgical defect located in a critical area of the stage…

Cropping the cause is misleading, this is all under cause:

> determines that the probable cause of this accident … Aircraft Engines. The subsequent catastrophic disintegration of the disk resulted in the liberation of debris in a pattern of distribution and with energy levels that exceeded the level of protection provided by design features of the hydraulic systems that operate the DC-10's flight controls.

Under recommendations:

> Encourage research and development of backup flight control systems ·for newly certificated wide-body airplanes that utilize an alternative source of motive power separate from that source used for the conventional control system. (Class II, Priority Action) (A-90-168)

> Conduct system safety reviews of currently certificated aircraft as a result of the lessons learned from the July 19, 1989, Sioux City, Iowa, DC-10 accident to give all possible consideration to the redundancy of, and protection for, power sources for flight and engine controls. (Class II, Priority Action) (A-90-169)

>Analyze the dispersion pattern, fragment size and energy level of released engine rotating parts from .the July 19, 1989, Sioux City , Iowa, DC-10 accident and include the results of this analysis, and any other peripheral data available, in a revision of AC 20-128 for future aircraft certification. (Class II, Priority Action) (A-90-170)

Etc. So calling this a design issue rather than an inspection issue is quite reasonable. Inspections are guaranteed to eventually fail, the aircraft being 100% dependent on them is a recipe for future disasters.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#205

Post by rpmisms »

jrockway wrote: post #186
rpmisms wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlines have figured out that people suck at multitasking.

Airlines are almost "lucky" in the sense that when they mess up training and processes, people die. As a result, they are somewhat motivated to fix it. In other industries, we say "that didn't work, VCs, can I have another $2M" and are just told "yup, of course!" As a result, we learn slow. Personally, I stole checklists from aviation and love it. I remember one week I was on vacation and we needed to do a complicate…

Checklists are amazing. Humans are really clever, but we're too good at context, and will completely miss steps, especially if the outcome of the previous step is unexpected.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#206

Post by Brian_K_White »

Arnt wrote: post #71
Brian_K_White wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't really test. The tests you can do don't actually tell you what you really need to know. You can't prove the material is good, you can only trust that the material is good, and 50 years later observe how it held up. You can't find out the distribution of the alloy ingredients, or detect voids, or crystal structures, or traces of other elements, except by sawing the part in half and looking at the cut surface…

I'm curious: I assume that the documentation asserts something acceptable about the manufacturer testing (accelerated, destructive, what have you). In theory it could assert that the production process was such and such without any information about resulting quality assurance, but that seems improbable. Why can't those tests be repeated (on samples, obviously)?

What tests? I just told you there are no tests which can actually tell you what you need to know. Even destructive tests.

Even if there was a destructive test that actually predicted lifetime performance, the total sample sizes are probably too small for statistics to be valid unless you destroy something like 10% or more. If you only have say 100 of something, a random samling of 1% is too few. 2 or 3 is no better. Maybe 10, IF all 10 gave perfectly consistent results. But there is no such test anyway.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#207

Post by ironmagma »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #131
BooneJS wrote: post #124

The FAA has their hands full investigating problems _after_ they become problems. Are airplanes in a race to the bottom or is there an opportunity to inject quality and reliability into this industry?

> FAA has their hands full investigating problems _after_ they become problems The FAA is constantly auditing, certifying and testing airmen, airplanes and plants. They have their hands full. But it's totally incorrect to say they're an ex post facto investigations agency.

There is a concept of a “moral minimum” where having a regulation might produce worse work than if the regulation didn’t exist, because companies will frequently work up to the minimum required by law and no more.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#208

Post by Retric »

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #195
Retric wrote: post #136

Critically the material is still titanium. Some of the paperwork is counterfeit so there’s concerns around quality control etc not what it is. > Spirit is trying to determine where the titanium came from, whether it meets proper standards despite its phony documentation, and whether the parts made from the material are structurally sound enough to hold up through the projected life spans of the jets, company official…

If the QC is unknown, then so is the metal.

The point is verifying that the parts are titanium is insufficient to ensure safety.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#209

Post by dehrmann »

crazygringo wrote: post #193

I'm curious if anyone suspects which is the more likely justification for the forged paperwork -- -- is it most likely lower-quality or wrong-quality titanium being passed off in an effort to fraudulently save money? -- or is it probably the real deal, but stolen from a warehouse somewhere and the certificate is fraudulent merely to conceal that it was stolen?

Could just be Russian titanium. They're the #3 producer and probably aren't selling much to the West, these days. Looks like some predates the war, though.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#210

Post by darby_nine »

ironmagma wrote: post #207
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FAA has their hands full investigating problems _after_ they become problems The FAA is constantly auditing, certifying and testing airmen, airplanes and plants. They have their hands full. But it's totally incorrect to say they're an ex post facto investigations agency.

There is a concept of a “moral minimum” where having a regulation might produce worse work than if the regulation didn’t exist, because companies will frequently work up to the minimum required by law and no more.

This strikes me as an extremely weak argument for removing regulation. Like yea that's a nice thought if you already believe in efficacy of private organizations, but on the other hand trust in any organization goes out the window the second a profit motivation is introduced.
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