Escalating scandal grips airlines including American and Southwest, as nearly 100 planes find fake parts from company with fake employees that vanished overnight::Why are so many flights getting canceled or delayed? Blame a mysterious British supplier accused of falsified documents for plane components.
My father has been designing and building bespoke aircraft for 45 years, was an FAA test pilot, inspector, and trainer for most of that time, and was in the US Air Force during the Korean War. He has more aviation experience than most.
His license plate reads GO RAIL and he won’t fly commercial if he can avoid it.
e: I am not surprised.
Sure, but… commercial airliners almost never crash?
Most planes in general don’t crash, fwiw. Most trains and cars don’t, either.
But would you rather your Uber was a Camry or a Lada Niva?
Planes are vastly safer than trains.
“Passenger vehicles are by far the most dangerous motorized transportation option compared. Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per 100,000,000 passenger miles was over 20 times higher than for buses, 17 times higher than for passenger trains, and 595 times higher than for scheduled airlines.”
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/deaths-by-transportation-mode/
That’s true in general. Planes are very safe overall.
My father has some airlines he’s okay with and some he won’t fly under any circumstances. I’m not talking about overall statistics, but what he knows about the industry’s practices, including mechanical and pilot issues.
Just my .02$
Niva🤩
I wouldn’t care because I understand how probability works.
When I’m driving down the highway, I spend as little time as possible next to semi-trailers because I’ve met loads of drivers and know how many are on heavy drugs or haven’t slept for far too long so they can meet their deadlines.
Probability-wise, it’s safe, but I don’t like it. Not everything is about raw numbers, Mr Spock.
Most planes in general don’t crash, fwiw.
That’s a bit of a myth. Large commercial planes are very save, that’s true. Small planes and helicopters on the other side can be very dangerous, as they fly around in far less controlled situations. They are so dangerous in fact that being a pilot is one of the most dangerous jobs around, only behind logging.
Yes, sorry, I meant commercial planes. I should have clarified.
When I was young and learning to fly, he told me if I ever got into ultralites he’d disown me (he was sort of kidding).
After all of the high profile train derailments in recent history, primarily caused by decaying infrastructure, bad standards, and cutting corners, makes me wonder if there’s someone with an extensive background in rail out there with a license plate that says “FLY AIR”.
I guess it’s really just a question of whether you take the risk you know or the one you don’t.
That’s cargo rail tho. Fatal passenger rail accidents are very rare and involve multiple human and system failures.
Yikes.
For a while I hated flying. Freaked me out even though I knew statistically it is a safe form of travel. Then I watched a bunch of Air Disasters shows and realized how many fixes they have put in place and I felt a lot better about flying.
Then I subbed to /r/AviationMaintenance. I really don’t want to fly anymore.
The whole Boeing Max shitshow is why flying makes me nervous now.
Flying is still safer than driving, FWIW. Not sure if that makes you feel better about flying or worse about driving (for me it’s the latter).
It’s kinda weird actually how normalized driving is. There’s a lot of people who are so scared of flying that they won’t do it. But far fewer people take such an approach to being in a personal vehicle, despite being massively more dangerous.
I think it’s because car deaths are just so normalized that most people are numb to them. It’s kinda like that iconic Joker monologue about how it’s “all according to the plan”. People are afraid of exemplary things, not the mundane things that will actually kill them.
I’m personally more afraid of driving. The learning and tests for pilots are extensive (I’ve done a lot of it), but any moron can get a driving license, and most lose much of that knowledge shortly after.
Other drivers are fucking scary.
Earlier this year a bunch of people got stuck on a 4 hour Amtrak ride for like 18+ hours, without power, toilets or water. Were told they couldn’t leave and not allowed/able to transfer to another train.
I’d rather just die in an incredibly rare plane crash than trust AmTrak to get me across the country in days versus a flight which can get me there in hours.
They need budget to actually upgrade their fleet.
That’s happened multiple times with planes, not just once last year.
It happened as recently as last month
Here are more:
I could keep going, but this is hard on mobile.
Point is, that happens with planes, too. That’s a logistics issue, not about the method of transport.
The FRA (federal railway administration) is scary. I would trust a train for sure.
Wasn’t everybody saying the opposite like 3 months ago?
The regulation on passenger rail is MUCH stronger then on freight.
Well I guess it’s not mechanic failures of the train that derails them.
Perhaps, but you don’t have as far to fall.
(e: oh, I mistook your comment for sarcasm. Ignore my reply; I agree.)
Ergo, less time to contemplate your last moments. I like it.
I remember watching an American 60 Minutes episode about commercial airlines buying fake plane parts, maybe 20+ years ago. Depressing to see it still happens.
I remember that one. They also discussed how most large airports had the ability to fully service aircraft and how there were only a few depots such as Texas and hiring skilled illegals as mechanics to service the majority of aircraft to cut costs and take advantage of those workers.
Non-paywall link for anyone: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/escalating-scandal-grips-airlines-including-190553757.html
Thank you.
Sir, we’ve discovered that these fuselages that we have been installing for the last 3 months are all made out of paper mache.
CEO: Shit we’re going to get sued! Do anything else to tell me?
We opened up a black box and nothing was inside except for Three paper clips and a dead AA battery.
Right, well, best shellac the paper mache and get going
That’s a clever scam. The magic is all in the name. AOG stand for Aircraft On Ground. Whenever there is a sefty risk identified, the rules says authorities and the industry must be advised within 24h. When a customer call about an AOG there is no 24h thing must happen right fucking now. Safety issues mean a plane could fall someday maybe, but AOG mean loosing money right now, by the minutes. So if you have a distributor that can send a part that will get the plane off the ground, with a bunch of papers it’s getting sold for a high price.
Well that is scary!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It has had two consecutive summers plagued with seemingly constant flight delays and cancellations as “revenge travel” grips a worldwide public eager to get out after a pandemic-era hibernation.
Instead these parts “get sold cheaply to customers who need inexpensive replacements.” Black market dealings can be slightly more nefarious in nature, often entailing sale of military technology to countries that are under international sanctions, such as selling spare F-14 fighter jets to Iran.
In addition to allegedly forging documents for airplane parts it appears that AOG Technics created several fake LinkedIn profiles claiming to be company executives, according to Bloomberg.
Several of the filings are riddled with typos, including misspelled executive titles and oddly capitalized words that appear to have happened when someone hit caps lock instead of the “A” key.
Other documents show a series of shifting corporate addresses, some of which end up back at either a coworking space in London and the offices of a now-retired accountant in a sleepy West Sussex town.
A Certificate of Incorporation filed with the Registrar of Companies for England and Wales in January 2021 listed Kensho’s headquarters at the same London address of AOG Technics—the North Nova building just a few blocks from Buckingham Palace.
The original article contains 1,523 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 87%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
So what happened to the whole “every part is tracked from production to installation and through maintenance checks?”
It’s called outsourcing. You outsource the risk and it magically goes away….
Or does it.
It sort of does. “Our vendor signed legally binding documents that they were responsible for vetting and verifying all parts. Sue them, not us.”
Unless by risk you mean an airplane falling out of the sky…
Risk impact comes in all forms from: it did nothing, to it destroyed our reputation, or even we killed people. Measuring risk impact and understanding the risks are incredibly important and outsourcing & hiding the risks behind a contract can’t protect your company’s reputation or the people killed at the end of the day
You wouldn’t download a jet engine…
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://youtu.be/qsvpU7G5IJg?si=YalJq9VGyxQ6JIYF
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Just flew southwest twice last week… cool cool cool cool.
Hey, you just survived twice last week. It’s something…
Flying southwest 3 times in November, wish me luck fellas
May the sod never be in your collar
Something like that I’m not good at this
Boo, paywall. Anyone have a list of the affected airlines?
Southwest, United, American Airlines, Virgin Australia
Glad I fly Delta, even with the typically higher cost.
Real news costs money while fake news are free. Guess what happens?
I am very glad my next international trip will by by train.
Harder to do for us in Australia.
Until it derails die to shitty track maintenance, or a drunk consuctor
Accidents happen everywhere and airplanes are about the safest mode of transport
What I want to know is what that part was.
Rooting for beverage cart panel.
Oh cool wardogs 2: the enshittification with jonah hill should be dope
