THIS Is A Crime That Should Worry EVERYONE!

0:00 Why would anyone want to steal a consignment

0:02 of worn out jet engine parts that were

0:04 about to be destroyed or recycled and who on earth would want to do that?

0:09 Well, that's exactly what happened in January 2026

0:13 and it didn't involve just a handful of parts either.

0:16 12 shipping containers full of engine

0:18 parts were mysteriously re-routed and then just

0:22 disappeared and while the identity of those who did it is still a mystery,

0:25 their motivation is much clearer and quite frankly, pretty disturbing.

0:30 Unfortunately, this strange event seems to be the latest example

0:34 of something the aviation industry has been fighting for years,

0:37 the trade of unapproved or fake aircraft parts.

0:41 And to understand what's at stake here,

0:43 let's take a quick look at Partnair Flight 394.

0:47 This happened on the 8th of September, 1989 and was a chartered flight involving

0:52 a Convair CV-580 that departed from Oslo in Norway

0:56 heading south on its way to Hamburg in Germany with 50 passengers and five crew.

1:01 Tragically, the aircraft broke apart mid-flight

1:04 with the loss of everybody on board and initially,

1:06 there was a lot of theories involving foul play in the form

1:11 of terrorism because in-flight breakups like this were and, thankfully,

1:14 still are extremely rare.

1:16 Plus this happened only a few months after

1:18 the loss of Pan Am Flight 103 which also broke

1:22 up mid-flight when a bomb detonated on board

1:24 as Petter and our friends over at Fern explained recently.

1:28 But in the months after the Partnair accident,

1:30 the investigators uncovered a different kind of foul play, counterfeit parts.

1:36 The tail fin of the Convair CV-580 is attached to the fuselage using four bolts.

1:42 This particular Convair was 36 years old when the accident

1:46 happened and at some point in that long history,

1:49 the four bolts were replaced with unapproved parts.

1:52 This means that the new bolts looked the part

1:55 but they didn't have the necessary strength to do

1:57 their job so they just wore out prematurely which then

2:01 led to excessive vibrations and eventually caused them to fail.

2:04 Now there's a lot more to this story including other broken or damaged

2:08 parts on that aircraft that contributed

2:10 to these vibrations plus some troublesome maintenance.

2:15 But the point here is that this aircraft accident was a landmark case which

2:19 made the entire industry realize that we

2:22 need to look closely at spare aircraft parts,

2:24 how we document them, how we keep track of them,

2:27 irrespective of whether they're just nuts

2:29 or bolts or compressor blades in jet engines.

2:32 And since then the FAA and other

2:35 aviation authorities launched multiple programs to make sure

2:38 that it would be really difficult for someone

2:41 to do something like this ever again.

2:43 And that's why the Partnair crash is often cited as an example

2:46 of a plane brought down by fake aircraft parts but actually,

2:50 there's another better reason for that.

2:53 As far as we've been able to find

2:54 this accident seems to be the only confirmed case

2:57 of people losing their lives because of unapproved

3:00 aircraft parts but if you know of another one,

3:02 let us know in the comments below and remember

3:04 to like and subscribe while you're down there.

3:07 Now if this is indeed the only such accident,

3:10 then that's a silver lining of sorts

3:12 but it might be a bit misleading because again,

3:15 these fake parts were just bolts and related fastener components.

3:19 So while they are clearly important they're not necessarily the main

3:23 type of parts that aircraft makers and regulators are worried about.

3:26 And to understand what I mean by that, you need

3:29 to know what types of unapproved aircraft parts might be out there.

3:33 Such parts might simply be out and out fakes

3:35 like in the case of bolts and other fasteners.

3:38 They could also be dimensionally identical

3:41 to the approved parts but just lacking quality,

3:44 meaning that they don't have the required strength

3:46 or other qualities that the approved parts have.

3:49 For example, they might be made of the wrong material making

3:51 them susceptible to corrosion or other kinds of wear over time.

3:55 Counterfeiters might sell mass-produced parts like bolts or in some cases,

3:59 they could try making fake versions of much more

4:03 specialized or complicated components like electronics or mechanical assemblies.

4:07 And then there's some more unlikely but still very

4:10 real sources for unapproved parts including some that, strictly speaking,

4:15 aren't even parts per se.

4:20 In 2024, a story broke about how several Boeing and Airbus aircraft

4:24 were built with some parts that were made using fake or questionable titanium.

4:29 This was a really complicated story involving Spirit AeroSystems

4:33 which has since been split up between Airbus and Boeing.

4:36 Until then, Spirit was a supplier to both manufacturers so

4:40 that questionable titanium was used to make parts for Boeing 737s,

4:45 787s and Airbus A220s.

4:48 Now as it turned out an Italian supplier

4:50 to Spirit made parts using this material after sourcing

4:53 it from another supplier in Turkey and that Turkish

4:57 company bought the material from yet another supplier,

4:59 this time over in China who claimed

5:02 to have bought it from another Chinese company.

5:05 The problem was discovered when someone at Titanium International Group,

5:08 that's the Italian company, noticed that the color of a specific

5:12 batch of titanium seemed a little bit unusual.

5:15 This caused them to take a closer look at the certificates

5:17 that the material had come with which didn't seem authentic.

5:21 So yes, even raw materials used for critical parts

5:25 like titanium come with documentation called certificates of conformity

5:30 that are essentially birth certificates for the material and follow

5:33 it until it's made into a finished aircraft part.

5:36 The material documentation stays with that part,

5:39 ensuring that it can be identified even after it's been fitted to an aircraft.

5:44 And this case showed why that's a really good idea.

5:46 In that case, someone working at the Chinese company that sold

5:50 the titanium to TAI in Turkey appears to have forged

5:54 the material certificate to make it look like it had come

5:56 from the other Chinese company which was a known titanium supplier.

6:01 Now this discovery was made several years after

6:03 the first parts were made using this batch

6:05 of material which meant that by then some

6:08 of these parts were fitted to in-service airliners.

6:11 So Boeing and Airbus had to perform a series

6:13 of tests to evaluate the risks from these parts.

6:17 According to reports, the material passed some tests and failed others.

6:21 But Spirit, the FAA and EASA in Europe concluded that there

6:25 was no imminent risks posed by these parts made using the material.

6:29 Now it isn't clear exactly how many aircraft were affected but, in any case,

6:34 the airliners will be monitoring their aircraft

6:36 in case these parts wear out a bit faster

6:39 than normal and will likely replace them when

6:41 the aircraft come in for their routine maintenance.

6:44 Again, this is a rare example of unapproved parts or, in this case,

6:48 materials making it onto aircraft at least as far as we know.

6:52 Another edge case involves parts that were actually produced

6:55 by the same manufacturer or supplier that makes the real

6:59 parts but which were factory rejects or seconds with imperfections

7:03 or other problems that made them fail quality control.

7:06 Now normally such parts would be destroyed or recycled unless

7:10 they somehow make it out of the factory and into service.

7:15 But a much more likely source of unapproved aircraft parts is just like the case

7:19 of those that disappeared in the 12

7:21 containers that I mentioned at the beginning,

7:23 used aircraft parts that should be taken out of service but might not be.

7:28 And I'm going to take a look at those after this.

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9:13 Now let's get back to the story.

9:15 Now if you've been following the news or if

9:17 you've been following this channel for a few years,

9:20 you may remember another very well publicized case of unapproved aircraft parts

9:25 involving a spurious vendor based in the UK which was discovered in 2023.

9:31 And there is some recent news on that story.

9:34 In February 2026, a British court sentenced Jose Zamora, age 38,

9:39 and a former techno DJ to a prison sentence

9:41 of four years and eight months for orchestrating a global aircraft

9:45 engine parts fraud that risked public safety and caused widespread

9:50 disruption to the aviation industry as the court put it.

9:54 The authorities first became aware of this individual and his company,

9:57 AOG Technics, early in the summer of 2023.

10:01 A maintenance repair and overhaul company or MRO located

10:04 in Portugal were unsure about the authenticity of some

10:07 paperwork they had on an engine part so they

10:10 decided to contact engine maker CFM to double check.

10:14 Now CFM is a 50-50 joint venture between General Electric

10:17 in the US and Safran in France and Safran quickly

10:21 determined that the certificate accompanying that part was a fake

10:25 and alerted aviation authorities like the CAA in the UK,

10:29 the FAA in the US and EASA in Europe.

10:32 Now we still don't know precisely what kind of engine part

10:35 this was but it was a part for a CFM 56 engine,

10:39 a type that powers most Boeing 737s before the MAX

10:43 variant and a lot of Airbus A320 family jets too.

10:47 So basically the fraud involved the engine

10:49 that powers the two best-selling aircraft in the world.

10:52 Now there are also a few serial numbers belonging to parts

10:55 for the GE CF6 family of engines which you'll find on Boeing 767s,

11:01 Airbus A330s or, before their recent grounding, with McDonnell Douglas MD-11s.

11:06 So also one of the most popular wide-body engines in the world.

11:10 Very quickly, the regulators alerted all airlines

11:13 and MROs that if they have parts in their inventory that they bought from AOG

11:17 or which have passed through the hands of AOG,

11:20 they should stop using them and isolate them from service.

11:24 It would later be revealed that between January 2019 and the end of 2023,

11:29 so even after the discovery of that first part,

11:32 AOG had processed and generated paperwork for as many as 60,000 suspected parts,

11:38 sending them mainly to MRO facilities all around the world.

11:41 Now most of these parts were in storage but as many

11:44 as 126 engines were later confirmed to have such parts installed in them.

11:49 Even MRO facilities operated by CFM itself were found

11:53 to have 16 engines with AOG source parts installed.

11:56 Incredibly, CFM had actually bought these parts through other suppliers.

12:01 So all of this meant that dozens of aircraft had

12:03 to be grounded while their engines and parts were checked.

12:06 Those 60,000 unapproved parts netted Mr.

12:09 Zamora a profit of £6.9 million or $9.3 million but the cost

12:15 to the airline industry was several times higher than that.

12:18 Grounding and inspecting in-service aircraft or finding

12:21 replacement engines for them to keep them in service cost the airline industry

12:25 an estimated £39.3 million or $52.7 million.

12:30 American Airlines was among those most badly affected.

12:34 They lost around $31 million.

12:37 GE and Safran lost millions too, not to mention their reputational damage.

12:41 But what did Mr.

12:43 Zamora actually do?

12:44 Well, each of these parts came with a document

12:46 called an Authorised Release Certificate or ARC.

12:51 Zamora used his home computer to doctor these ARCs

12:53 and to create a fake paper trail for the parts, basically fake invoices,

12:58 shipping memos and other documents that would show that AOG,

13:02 his company, had bought these parts from the engine makers.

13:06 Now some critical aircraft or engine parts are life-limited meaning

13:10 that after a certain number of flight hours or cycles,

13:13 they need to be inspected and overhauled or just simply replaced.

13:17 Now most of those 60,000 parts were not life-limited components.

13:22 They were dampers, seals, bushings and also nuts,

13:25 bolts and washers and it isn't clear if these were used aircraft parts or if

13:30 they were new out and out fake parts that were made for a different purpose.

13:34 But crucially, some documents showed that AOG made three sales which

13:39 involved an unspecified number of low-pressure

13:42 turbine blades and high-pressure compressor veins.

13:45 Now these components work pretty hard in an engine

13:48 core so they definitely are life-limited parts and they

13:52 must have been used parts because you just can't

13:55 simply source components like these by just repurposing something else.

13:58 Now we'll come back to that shortly but at this point,

14:02 there's something else worth pointing out which

14:04 is that none of the court documents

14:06 or the news reports on the story say anything about any accomplices of Mr.

14:11 Zamora and his company.

14:12 He is the only individual mentioned although

14:15 his operation clearly affected airlines and MROs worldwide.

14:19 That's important because initially,

14:21 news reports said that AOG had multiple storage facilities worldwide in the UK,

14:26 the US and elsewhere.

14:28 But the court documents suggest that all of this may well have been part

14:32 of the deception plan and that's because

14:34 in addition to faking ARCs and shipping documents,

14:37 Zamora also created multiple email addresses

14:40 for a series of fake sales managers,

14:42 quality managers and others and then used them

14:45 to create plausible looking email chains to give

14:48 the impression of a busy legitimate business

14:50 with offices and sites all around the world.

14:53 Now to be clear, the court documents do not specifically say that Mr.

14:57 Zamora really did do everything by himself

14:59 from his home in Surrey UK using just a computer,

15:02 a printer and maybe a few stick-on labels but even

15:05 if he really did do it all by himself,

15:08 it would be good to know where he sourced the life-limited parts,

15:11 the turbine blades and the stator vanes which brings us back

15:15 to those 12 containers full of engine parts that were stolen in January 2026.

15:20 That strange heist happened in Spain and we don't exactly

15:24 know where but this was a theft of used aircraft parts

15:28 so it likely happened near a place like Tarul Airport

15:31 in Spain which is a large aircraft maintenance and storage site.

15:35 Whatever the exact location,

15:37 the heist involved a total of 600 aircraft engine parts and once again,

15:42 they were mostly for the CFM 56 but the theft also included parts

15:47 for the IAE V2500 which is the other

15:50 legacy engine option for the Airbus A320 family,

15:53 the Pratt& Whitney PW1100G which powers many Airbus A320neos

15:59 and the Rolls Royce RB211 which is mainly used for the 757.

16:04 Again not all of these parts involved were life-limited

16:07 but three of the 12 containers did contain such parts.

16:12 Now as Alex Derber explained in the Aviation Week when critical

16:16 parts like these are declared non-airworthy which was the case here,

16:20 they're taken to someone that physically renders them

16:23 un-airworthy and these companies are called mutilation providers,

16:27 which kind of gives you an idea of what that involves.

16:30 And those life-limited parts disappeared while they were on their way to be

16:35 made un-airworthy and EASA also reportedly warned

16:37 operators that the way the heist was

16:39 carried out suggests that whoever did it plans to make these parts available

16:43 for sale on the open market one way or another and that is quite worrying.

16:49 Some life-limited parts including stators and turbine

16:52 blades can sometimes be serviced in specialized ways

16:55 that just eke out a bit more life in them but the point here is that airlines,

17:00 engine makers and MROs actually try to extract

17:03 as much life and performance out of those engines

17:06 and the parts in the first place as long as that can be done safely.

17:10 So when these maintenance and repair specialists

17:13 decide that the best way to deal

17:14 with a specific part is to trash it then that really is what should be done.

17:19 Now at this point, some of you might be thinking:

17:22 Well, hang on Ben, right at the start, you told us that actual aircraft

17:26 accidents involving counterfeit or unapproved parts

17:29 are extremely rare and that you only know of one that involved fatalities.

17:33 So if that's true, then why is this such a big deal?

17:37 Well it's a good question but the problem here is that the Partnair

17:41 mid-air breakup is the only confirmed case

17:43 of fatalities caused by unapproved aircraft parts.

17:46 But confirming more of these events is really

17:49 difficult especially when life-limited engine parts are involved.

17:53 If an engine turbine, compressor blade or stator breaks off especially if

17:58 the engine is at a high power setting which it

18:00 most likely will be in that scenario then

18:03 the broken parts will often cause a cascade of failures.

18:06 Basically, the engine will grenade itself internally even if

18:10 the casing stops fragments from flying off at high speed.

18:13 But to be clear here though the air accident

18:16 investigators do have methods of determining if a blade

18:19 fractured because it was hit by another part

18:21 or because it was worn or fractured to begin with.

18:24 But it's not always possible to identify

18:26 the culprit in these failures and that's even if

18:29 we actually have all the pieces to examine

18:31 and they're not at the bottom of the ocean.

18:33 In that scenario the part's doctored paper

18:35 trail is the only remaining clue of why

18:38 it might have failed if that paperwork can be identified for what it is.

18:42 For these reasons, aviation authorities and other law enforcement

18:46 agencies are examining this latest parts heist very carefully.

18:50 And while there are no official connections between this story and Mr Zamora,

18:55 there are some similarities that are kind of difficult to ignore.

18:59 In both cases, many of the parts that are not time limited include

19:03 things like bearings and seals for Airbus and Boeing variants of the CFM 56,

19:08 showing that there is plenty of interest for what

19:11 is still the world's most popular jet engine.

19:14 For sure, these stories show that this problem goes far beyond one

19:18 guy defrauding the global aviation industry from his suburban home in the UK.

19:22 But I think we can all agree that we have

19:24 to stop the mechanisms that make this kind of trade possible

19:28 and the frustrating thing here is that there is a lot

19:31 of perfectly legal salvaging of usable

19:33 non-time limited parts from older aircraft.

19:37 And inevitably, that work will probably become much harder

19:40 as we add scrutiny to prevent the illicit parts trade.

19:44 Finally, there is something else we need to consider and that's geopolitics,

19:49 whether they are trade barriers, sanctions or both,

19:52 mean some nations don't have easy access to a steady

19:56 legal supply of parts for their western aircraft fleets.

19:59 These kinds of volatile global conditions create even

20:02 more demand for parts from spurious sources so while

20:06 we're assuming that those stolen parts will be

20:09 sold this might not necessarily involve the open market.

20:13 They could potentially go wholesale to someone,

20:15 maybe a big customer who really wants 12 containers

20:19 of jet engine parts for a varied fleet of commercial aircraft.

20:22 And a while back, Petter made a video about such a market for shady aircraft

20:26 parts and even whole aircraft if you want to explore that a little bit more.

20:30 But what do you think?

20:32 Have you heard of any other similar

20:33 stories about questionable parts or even metal alloys?

20:36 Let us know in the comments below.

20:39 I'm Ben Watts.

20:40 You're watching Mentour Now.

20:41 Have an amazing week and I'll see you next time.