Word: bogus
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...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...
...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...
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...
Suddenly it was clear that bogus parts were out there in great numbers. One of the first steps had to be to determine the scope of the problem. We crafted a series of audits and went to repair stations to count their stock. One of those was the FAA's own Logistics Center, where the agency kept the parts inventory for its own fleet. I felt considerable satisfaction at finding that 39% of the FAA's own spare parts were suspect. Inevitably, this finding outraged the FAA--they argued with us, insisting that our audit of random samples could...
...studies of repair-station parts bins were mind boggling: 43% of the parts bought from manufacturers were bogus; a shocking 95% were fraudulent when they came from parts brokers. With brokers, the repair stations had very little chance of buying genuine parts. Again the FAA argued that the parts we found were authentic; they were just missing their labels...