NYT: "F.A.A. Investigating How Questionable Titanium Got Into Boeing and Airbus Jets"
Via the New York Times, this unfortunate quality assurance news:
...The problem illustrates the complex global supply chain used in producing modern jetliners, and the story of what appears to have gone wrong involves companies in China, Italy, Turkey and the United States.
The issue appears to date to 2019 when a Turkish material supplier, Turkish Aerospace Industries, purchased a batch of titanium from a supplier in China, according to the people familiar with the issue. The Turkish company then sold that titanium to several companies that make aircraft parts, and those parts made their way to Spirit, which used them in Boeing and Airbus planes.
In December 2023, an Italian company that bought the titanium from Turkish Aerospace Industries noticed that the material looked different from what the company typically received. The company, Titanium International Group, also found that the certificates that came with the titanium seemed inauthentic.
Turkish Aerospace Industries did not respond to a request for a comment.
Spirit began investigating the matter, and the company notified Boeing and Airbus in January that it could not verify the source of the titanium used to make certain parts. Titanium International Group told Spirit that when it bought the material in 2019, it had no clue that the paperwork had been forged, according to Spirit officials...
...Spirit officials said they had started testing titanium parts to make sure aviation-grade material was used. The company is testing components that are still in stock and that are on undelivered fuselages.
So far, Spirit’s testing has confirmed that the titanium is the appropriate grade for airplane manufacturers. But the company has been unable to confirm that the titanium was treated through the approved airplane manufacturing process. The material passed some of the materials testing performed on it but failed others.
It's always weird to me that companies who work with materials don't perform standard (for a chemist, anyway) identity and purity testing. Can't imagine the pressure there is on QC/QA to approve suppliers to keep manufacturing lines open as well.