The aviation industry has dubbed aircraft parts as “bogus” which are fraudulent knock-offs, parts with misrepresented age, parts with prior crash damage, or parts with misrepresented composition(such as parts made of an inferior alloy).

The Federal Aviation Administration has placed “bogus” parts in the much broader category of “unapproved parts”. The category of unapproved parts can contain “bogus” parts as well as legitimate parts that are misused and legitimate parts that have merely an incorrect paper-trail. The Federal Aviation Administration contests that a vast majority of unapproved parts are legitimate aircraft parts with incorrect or insufficient paper-trails.

Many critics have accused the Federal Aviation Administration of using the innocuous category of unapproved parts as an attempt to hide the serious problem of “bogus” part

ValuJet is not alone when it comes to “bogus” parts. A three-month investigation by BusinessWeek revealed that fake parts have made there way into the parts inventory of every major commercial airline. The head of quality control at a major discount airline admits: “I’ve got bad parts. We’ve all got em [ ] “. Even the Air Force found that falsely certified fire extinguishers were destine for the president’s airplane, Air Force One. The nations aging fleet of airliners and the outsourcing of maintenance is typically blamed for the prevalence of “bogus” parts.

One aspect pertaining to the success of “bogus” parts sales is the potential savings to maintenance departments and the potential profit to parts brokers. A graphic example of the cost differential between new and “bogus” parts occurred when a confidential government informant in Miami attempted to sell, by telephone, a stolen constant-speed drive. This flight crucial part sells new for $100,000. Every part broker contacted was interested in buying the constant-speed drive for prices ranging from $10,000 to $25,000. Scraped turbine blades can be purchased for $1 and sold in a supposed refurbished condition for $1,200.

The Transportation Department, lead by Mary Shiavo, began investigations in 1991 which led to the 164 indictments and 130 convictions.

Under the condition of anonymity, Federal Aviation Administration inspectors stated that the problem of “bogus” parts is on the rise.

It is also common place for airlines to discretely alert one another of known bad parts and missing parts. December 20, 1995, American Airlines publicly released a list of parts missing from the crash site of flight 965 in California.

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