FLYING INTO TROUBLE

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Our five years of investigations took my agents all over the country and occasionally overseas, and filled our evidence rooms with crates of reworked scrap and other counterfeit parts. Yet the FAA would shrug off what it called "suspected unapproved parts" as a paperwork problem. Some manufacturers made parts without the right FAA permits; others sold certified parts that were overruns and didn't have FAA approval. Unapproved parts could be those that were not manufactured or repaired under authorized procedures. One of the largest aviation manufacturers in the world is Pratt & Whitney, maker of one of the most popular jet engines. We would eventually track down a New York broker who had a local machine shop copy a Pratt & Whitney part. The broker had boxes and packaging printed with the Pratt & Whitney label, except that on some of the bogus boxes the Pratt & Whitney eagle was flying into the ground. Those parts were new, but made with the wrong materials.

The FAA said these were not safety issues. They were only unapproved parts. It was a label the FAA would rely on to blur the issue, allowing officials to talk about the investigation without appearing to endorse it or offend the repair stations, parts makers or brokers. The FAA wouldn't even use the term bogus parts. Administrator Hinson would tell Congress that "unapproved parts may fit somebody's definition of bogus parts, but we only deal in 'approved' and 'unapproved.'" Associate administrator Anthony Broderick would tell Air Transport World in 1994 that "there is no safety problem associated with undocumented parts."

The FAA would insist that bogus parts had never caused a plane to crash, and that there was no increase in the number of bogus parts, just more reports. On my desk in a light blue folder lay a computer printout that clearly indicated the NTSB did not agree. Page after dense page described accidents the NTSB tied to counterfeit parts. For instance, in 1990 a Pan Am Express flight crashed when its nose landing gear jammed "due to the installation of a bogus part by unknown persons."

At a meeting after our investigations began, FAA officials insisted that there was no epidemic of bogus parts. "We have to consider the economic impact to industry," they said, an explanation that echoed through my years as Inspector General. I truly believed a line I started using around the office--"If it's on a plane, it could be bogus." We carted boxes of sample bogus parts around with us, laid them out on tables and urged the airline maintenance people to take a good look. We needed them, we said, to hold on to any similar bogus parts they found. Call us, we pleaded, or call the FAA, but report the bogus parts and hang on to the evidence.

Almost immediately, reports of bogus parts soared. They came in because mechanics noticed an odd color, or that metal edges were rough, or that boxes were improperly labeled. When Federal Express mechanics ran across starters they thought were fakes, their quality-control department and our agents tore the $10,000 piece apart and found reworked scrap and car parts.