Plane parts found to be substandard

Outsourcing by aircraft manufacturers has resulted in substandard parts being built into commercial airplanes that carry thousands of passengers daily, according to a government report.

Major manufacturers such as Boeing Co., General Electric Aircraft Engines and Bombardier/Learjet often cut costs by allowing foreign suppliers to make airplane components, but do not adequately supervise the quality of their subcontractors’ work, said the report this week from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s inspector general.

“This is a critical safety issue, as demonstrated by four engine failures that occurred in [fiscal] 2003 due to faulty speed sensors on fuel pumps obtained from a supplier,” the inspector general’s report said. “Three of the engine failures occurred on the ground and one occurred in flight. The part failures were traced to unapproved design changes made by a sub-tier supplier.”

The inspector general’s audit found “widespread deficiencies at supplier facilities used by major aviation manufacturers” at 20 of the 21 plants inspected.

Other major manufacturers mentioned in the report are Rolls-Royce PLC, which manufacturers aircraft engines; Pratt & Whitney, another engine maker; and Airbus Industries, which competes with Boeing to manufacture airplanes.

Their subcontractors’ plants the inspector general audited are located in 15 countries, including Chile, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan. Aircraft parts typically manufactured in foreign countries include passenger doors, rudders, wing flaps and wing boxes.

Common safety problems among the subcontractors were a lack of work documentation, deficient tooling calibration and inadequate employee training.

“One supplier allowed new, untrained employees to manufacture several components,” the report said. “We witnessed one new employee improperly inspecting a product. A later review of his training record showed that he had not received any formal training in the proper inspection method.”

The inspector general also found fault in Federal Aviation Administration audits of manufacturers.

The agency’s guidelines require four audits a year of a manufacturer’s suppliers, regardless of how many suppliers the manufacturer uses.

As a result, the quality-control audits often are uneven and miss checks on suppliers whose work should be monitored, the inspector general said.

The report said, “A manufacturer that has 2,000 suppliers and is assessed as a high risk will require the same number of supplier audits as a high-risk manufacturer that has only 20 suppliers.”

It concluded by making six recommendations for improvements by the FAA and manufacturers.

Among them, the inspector general said the FAA should do a better job of auditing the highest-risk suppliers, particularly for “flight-critical parts for passenger aircraft.” The report said suppliers for military aircraft also lacked adequate supervision.

One recommendation said the FAA should “develop a risk-assessment process that reduces the level of subjectivity in evaluating manufacturers so that inspectors’ risk assessments will be more consistent.”

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