`BOGUS PARTS' PLAGUE AIRLINES : SUBSTANDARD COMPONENTS PUT PUBLIC AT RISK.

Byline: Frank Bajak Associated Press 

When an American Airlines plane smashed into a Colombian mountainside last December, outlaw salvagers didn't even wait for all 159 victims' bodies to be collected before they moved in.

Using sophisticated tools, they extracted engine thrust reversers, cockpit avionics and other valuable components from the shattered Boeing 757 and then used helicopters to fly the parts off the steep ridge, U.S. and Colombian sources say.

The parts were offered for sale in Miami, a hub of the thriving black market in recycled, stolen and counterfeit aircraft parts.

``They wanted to sell the whole lot, including the landing gear,'' a law enforcement source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Parts illegally salvaged from crashes, counterfeit parts and other substandard components regularly find their way into the world's air fleets, sold at bargain prices, often with falsified documents about their origin or composition.

For the flying public, they are a growing peril.

``The whole system is contaminated,'' said Peter Friedman, director of quality at an aircraft repair station in Oakland, Calif. ``In my position, I find unapproved parts on a daily basis.''

``Unapproved parts'' is the Federal Aviation Administration's term for components not certified as airworthy - from fraudulently produced knockoffs made from inadequate alloys to recycled pieces misrepresented to hide defects, age or crash damage.

In the industry, they are known as ``bogus parts.'' For people with no qualms about putting the flying public at risk, it's a lucrative market. The worldwide aircraft parts inventory is worth $45 billion.

Just how many unairworthy parts have claimed lives is not known. Internationally, no one keeps records. In the United States, the number of cases is in dispute.

The worst confirmed accident occurred Sept. 8, 1989, when at 22,000 feet over the North Sea, the tail section of a Convair 580 turboprop plane began vibrating violently and tore loose. The charter aircraft, carrying 55 people from Oslo, Norway, to Hamburg, Germany, splattered over 3-1/2 miles of sea. Everyone aboard died.

Norwegian investigators painstakingly dredged up 90 percent of the 36-year-old plane and found the cause: bogus bolts, bushings and brackets. The charter company, Partnair, went out of business, and the origin of the parts was never determined.

Most major international airlines have encountered unapproved parts - and the problem is more serious in the developing world, where regulation is lax when it exists at all.

``It's a real can of worms,'' said Michael F. Rioux, chief of engineering and maintenance at the Air Transport Association of America, whose 20 member airlines carry 97 percent of U.S. commercial traffic.

Brian Wall, security chief for the International Air Transport Association, which represents more than 260 airlines, promotes seminars on bogus parts.

``We view this as a potentially dangerous situation. Who knows if we know the whole picture?'' Wall said from IATA headquarters in Montreal.

Many industry executives refuse to discuss the issue on the record.

Even officials at United, American and Federal Express, among air carriers widely praised for tightening up their control of parts inventories, would not speak openly about their experiences with bogus parts.

Japan Airlines said the carrier's quality control chief would only answer questions on the subject in writing, and Air France executives refused to grant an interview to discuss what one spokeswoman called a ``touchy subject.'' Swissair's quality control chief also declined to talk on the record.

That the industry is worried shows in American Airlines' unusual decision to make public a 14-page list, complete with serial numbers, of parts missing from the remains of Flight 965 after it crashed near Cali, Colombia, last Dec. 20.

The list put the industry on alert.

Sold to repair stations or airlines by brokers whose business is unregulated - more than 5,000 are active in the United States alone - black market parts come from theft rings, from counterfeiters, from ``strip and dip'' shops that mask flaws with a new coat of metal plating. Some even come from the production overruns of legitimate manufacturers - parts that may be airworthy but also can be production line rejects.

The money is so good that one Colombian parts trafficker told a Miami detective she switched to the trade from drug-running.

As the world's commercial air fleet ages, more overhauls are required and the potential increases for a bad part getting on a big plane.

Yet until congressional pressure and a series of groundbreaking investigative reports by the Cleveland Plain Dealer last year forced a policy shift, the FAA did not treat bogus parts as a serious threat, arguing they had not caused a single U.S. commercial aviation accident.

``Do unapproved parts pose a significant safety problem for the flying public?'' then FAA administrator David Hinson said at a May 1995 Senate hearing. ``The answer is no, they do not.''

Howard Davidow, a Miami aviation consultant with 37 years in the industry, warned at the hearing, however, that the potential for a bogus part causing a catastrophic accident ``has entered the stage of critical mass.'' Three months later, the FAA created a task force on unapproved parts.

A study by the FAA of its accident-incident database done at the request of the Associated Press found that unapproved parts played a role in 174 aircraft crashes or less serious accidents from May 1973 through April 1996, resulting in 17 deaths and 39 injuries. None involved major commercial carriers.

But critics, including outgoing Sen. William Cohen, R-Maine, suggest the FAA may gloss over the role bogus parts played in some accidents because it does not want the onerous responsibility of regulating the parts industry.

James Frisbee, quality control chief at SNorthwest Airlines until his 1992 retirement, is among those who feel bogus parts have contributed to many more accidents than federal records indicate.

``It's very, very hard to pin the cause of an accident on a part that failed . . . especially when the airplane is scattered over five acres,'' he said.

Major airlines have as a rule been discreet about bogus parts, not wanting to spook passengers. Frisbee says standard procedure has been to alert other airlines to a discovery by phone call but rarely inform the FAA, which does not require them to report such incidents.

Frisbee said he and colleagues from American, Delta and Federal Express sought stricter regulation of the parts market in 1990 but the FAA didn't take them seriously.

Mary Schiavo did. Appointed the Transportation Department's inspector-general by President Bush that year, the former federal prosecutor made bogus parts a priority.

Investigations launched under Schiavo have yielded more than 150 convictions in such cases, with jail sentences ranging up to five years and more than $47 million in restitution and fines paid.

In the Colombia crash last December, the parts were cleaned, boxed up at Cali's airport and flown out of the country, U.S. and Colombian sources say. What eventually happened to them isn't known.

American Airlines was amazed to discover that the salvagers used specialized tools, including cutting torches, to extract pieces from the Rolls-Royce engines.

THE WRONG STUFF:

FBI identifies four basic fraud schemes involving bogus aircraft parts:

Affixing FAA yellow airworthiness tag, which certifies part as having been rebuilt or overhauled, to used part on which no work has been done.

Making part based on manufacturer specifications but with inferior materials, so it resembles genuine item without meeting flight specifications or having been tested.

Buying, and then reselling, production overruns from parts makers who supply major aircraft manufacturers. Such parts Smay be airworthy, but they can be factory rejects.

Obtaining parts that are fatigued, worn or damaged to point of being unfixable and selling them as refurbished.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) Rescue workers walk past the turbine of an American Airlines plane that crashed in Colombia on Dec. 20, 1995. Parts were illegally salvaged.

(2) No caption (Airplanes)

Associated Press

Box: THE WRONG STUFF (See text)