A famous crash caused by a hidden defect in titanium:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232</a><p>The accident wasn't total only because of magnificent actions of the flight crew.
NASA had issues with falsified tests of aluminium not long ago[1], reportedly costing them $700 million in losses[2].<p>Though buying from a relatively little known Chinese vendor without thorough testing on your own seems a bit reckless.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/aluminum-extrusion-manufacturer-agrees-pay-over-46-million-defrauding-customers-including" rel="nofollow">https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/aluminum-extrusion-manufactur...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nasa-metals-fraud-20190501-story.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nasa-metals-fraud-201...</a>
Critically the material is still titanium. Some of the paperwork is counterfeit so there’s concerns around quality control etc not what it is.<p><i>> 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 officials said. Spirit said it was trying to determine the most efficient way to remove and replace the affected parts if that ended up being necessary.</i>
> <i>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 officials said. Spirit said it was trying to determine the most efficient way to remove and replace the affected parts if that ended up being necessary.</i><p>Why are they even considering keeping the counterfeit parts in?<p>Is the situation that Spirit AeroSystems believes the eventual answer will be that the aircraft can't be used with known-counterfeit parts, but they're dancing around liability or PR, or they don't want to grandstand upon their customers' toes?
A few decades ago:<p>I talked with a business man who said that the Chinese would absolutely perform to contract but no more. Early samples would be excellent, full production would be exactly and only what you asked for. Almost malicious compliance.<p>I talked with a Chinese salesperson who said they always signed contracts with foreigners using their English name. Such contracts are unenforceable. Almost malicious compliance.<p>It's hard for me to have sympathy for complaining about people doing the least they can when you're trying to pay the least you can.
> <i>Spirit Aerosystems, based in Wichita, Kansas, which raised the alarm on the titanium issue</i><p>Heh, they're the good guys in this story apparently.
For anyone immediately going to UAF 232 as an example please realize that this is titanium used in the air frame not the engine. The engine is under dramatically higher loads and is far more material fault intolerant. I'm not saying this isn't serious issue but this is not as severe a concern, otherwise the planes would be grounded already.
I'm curious if anyone suspects which is the more likely justification for the forged paperwork --<p>-- is it most likely lower-quality or wrong-quality titanium being passed off in an effort to fraudulently save money?<p>-- or is it probably the real deal, but <i>stolen</i> from a warehouse somewhere and the certificate is fraudulent merely to conceal that it was stolen?
Ive often wondered whether poor quality counterfeit parts are being inserted into the supply chain as a form of industrial sabotage by competitors (including nation-states).
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?
The headline is spun. The text of the article doesn't allege "counterfeit titanium", only that the paperwork chain contains (according I guess to an audit done internally at Spirit) counterfeit <i>documents</i>. What that says about the metal itself is unknown. It seems more likely to me to be legitimate <i>but stolen</i> titanium than it does to be fake material.<p>It's not really feasible to fake something like a raw metal. Nothing else looks like titanium, nothing has the weight properties, even things like smells are different between metals that come out of different processes and tarnish in different ways. Basically by the time you got something that wouldn't be noticed by the assembly crews you'd have spent so much you might as well just have bought stolen titanium on the black market.
However much you can "save" by outsourcing...in a sufficiently fraud-plagued business environment, it's seldom worth it longer-term.<p>Conveniently, modern businesses and their leaders are judged and rewarded purely on short-term metrics.
> Spirit added that “more than 1,000 tests have been completed to confirm the mechanical and metallurgical properties of the affected material to ensure continued airworthiness.”<p>So basically, has nothing to do with safety? Is this simply Uncle Sam is mad he couldn't take a dip of the proceeds?
It’s hard not to think this is just the FAA trying to protect Boeing again by making it look like Airbus is equally bad.<p>FAA should just be rehoused under department of commerce where the job is actually to promote and protect American business interests.<p>At least then we can admit we have no regulatory oversight of aviation safety. Let’s be honest as a country for once.