By Francesca Landini and Tim Hepher
BRINDISI, Italy (Reuters) – On a Saturday morning in May, 2020, Italian police officers caught two men pouring chemical waste into the sewers in the southern port city of Brindisi, near a small plane components factory.
Five years on, that routine pollution case has spiralled into a wide-ranging judicial investigation into how thousands of flawed titanium and aluminium parts manufactured in Italy ended up in nearly 500 Boeing 787 jets still in use.
The probe, due to be discussed at a preliminary hearing in Italy on Thursday, focuses on how tiny aero-part-maker Manufacturing Process Specification (MPS) allegedly defrauded clients by using cheaper and weaker metals to make floor fittings and other plane parts. Company executives deny the charge.
Boeing has repeatedly said that there is no immediate safety risk. U.S. regulators, meanwhile, are preparing technical guidance for airlines to detect and replace any bad parts, without opting for the emergency orders reserved for the most pressing cases.
But the precarious chain of events that led detectives to the alleged scam, including the surprise pollution find, raises broader questions about the failure by the aerospace industry’s own voluntary audit system to detect sub-standard components.
Detectives were already investigating MPS’ owners over the bankruptcy of their previous firm. But after catching two MPS workers dumping polluting liquids next to the factory, police broadened their enquiries to the Brindisi firm’s raw material purchases, three investigative sources said.
With the help of whistleblowers, police found that MPS and its predecessor company had bought very small quantities of the prescribed metals required for 787 jets, including a tough titanium alloy, switching instead to cheaper and less resilient pure titanium, they said.
Prosecutors allege that for four years parts made with the wrong type of metal flowed into the aerospace supply chain via Italian group Leonardo, which builds two fuselage sections for the Boeing 787 at its nearby Grottaglie plant.
The case comes as Boeing tries to move beyond a separate safety and quality crisis that triggered financial and management upheaval and layoffs. The rest of the industry is also grappling with sporadic issues with rogue parts.
Despite using low-quality metals, the now defunct MPS passed audits by three different certification bodies or private auditors between 2017 and 2021, according to a Reuters review.
None of these audits involved a physical check of the floor fittings, which are structural components of a jet, the news agency found.
While news of the alleged metal switch at Boeing’s Italian subcontractor made international headlines in October 2021, details of MPS’ auditing process, as well as the number of weak floor fittings installed, have not been previously reported.
For its review, Reuters consulted confidential Italian police and prosecutors’ documents, judicial seizure decrees, copies of records from an aerospace supplier database and spoke to four people with direct knowledge of the investigation.
Half a dozen investigators, lawyers and certification experts told Reuters the case raises doubts about whether controls, including third-party audits, are robust enough to ensure below-grade parts do not end up in commercial jets.
“It is extremely worrying that there were no preventive checks on the type of material used to build these parts,” said Danilo Recine, vice-president of Italy’s ANPAC pilot union.
INSPECTIONS
The FAA has not grounded any 787 planes but issued a draft notice last year that, when finalised, will require airlines to inspect jets for flawed parts and replace them.
Its proposed notice potentially covers almost 500 jets but until the inspections are carried out it is impossible to know how many parts are on which jets, it said in the May 2024 draft.
The FAA declined to elaborate. It noted only that a period for collecting comments from airlines had ended.
Contacted by Reuters, Leonardo said in a statement that prosecutors are treating it as a victim in the case.
Boeing, which has also been granted the status of victim, declined comment on specifics of the case but said it had a “comprehensive quality management system,” which includes audits of suppliers.
“This complements additional audits by certification bodies, suppliers and others within the industry” it added.
MPS, and its predecessor Processi Speciali, used to make several plane parts for Leonardo, including the fittings connecting the beams supporting the Boeing 787 cabin floor to the fuselage. It also supplied other aerospace firms.
After performing material inspections on the components, investigators allege MPS manufactured 539 below-grade floors for Boeing that were supplied via Leonardo, according to a confidential document prepared by prosecutors.
The faulty floor fittings ended up in as many as 477 jets still in service, the document said, a handful more than the potential population of affected jets cited by the FAA.
In the event of an emergency landing, the lower-quality floor fittings could lead to a collapse of the jet’s floor, aerospace experts who tested the parts on behalf of prosecutors said in the document.
The FAA has raised a similar worst-case scenario, adding it would need multiple adjacent parts to fail simultaneously.
In their final report, Italian prosecutors accuse MPS’ head of quality, the company’s owner and three relatives of fraud and breach of airplane safety rules. Two other workers are accused of polluting soil and water.
“(They) have put flight security in danger by producing and delivering to Leonardo … structural aerospace parts made, not with contracted titanium alloy, but pure titanium – which has structural strength that is largely lower to that of the prescribed alloy,” the report says.
In total, prosecutors have said MPS or its predecessor supplied around 6,000 parts using the wrong kind of metal, although the vast majority are not structural components.
Francesca Conte, a lawyer for MPS’ owner, said the supplier had worked in partnership with Leonardo and obtained all necessary certifications. “If there were any anomalies, they would have been immediately evident”.
Conte and the lawyers for the other defendants said there was evidence to be presented during the trial that would prove their clients were not responsible for the alleged crimes.
WEAK CHECKS
To become a Boeing or Airbus supplier, parts makers must be audited for their quality management systems under an aerospace chapter of the ISO global standards organisation.
Those involved in certain special processes like welding or electro-plating also need a U.S.-based approval called NADCAP.
Industry records reviewed by Reuters show that MPS and its predecessor won approvals from three auditing bodies under the ISO-based aerospace standard for quality systems. The last certification was awarded in May 2021.
Leonardo said in an emailed statement it had learnt about issues with MPS components at the end of 2020 from Boeing.
Asked how it vetted contractors, Leonardo said that MPS first had to qualify to enter its and Boeing’s suppliers’ lists. The group said that it had also carried out subsequent checks of MPS using “documents made available by the supplier.”
The audits were conducted both independently and in joint teams with Boeing, the Italian company added.
“Any fraudulent behaviour cannot be detected by these checks,” Leonardo said.
However, since last year, the company has begun doing extra tests on chemical and physical characteristics of “significant components”, it added.
The lack of spot physical checks baffled police, according to a source in the investigation.
“The problem of faulty parts was found out in 2020,” the source said. “If quality controls had worked, then it would not have been discovered so late.”
“NEED FOR A REGULATORY FRAMEWORK”
Under the voluntary oversight system for quality management, private auditors known as certification bodies check whether an aerospace firm has the right processes, machines and skilled workers to carry out its tasks to the correct standards.
Random physical tests are typically only included if a company needs a quality certificate for specific products.
But Christopher Paris, founder of consultancy Oxebridge Quality Resources, said the MPS case demonstrated the need for tougher oversight of the pyramid of controls, including not only the independent auditors but accreditation bodies that vet them.
“There is a need for a regulatory framework,” he said.
None of the auditors or various industry bodies is targeted by the Italian investigation.
ACCREDIA, which is responsible for accrediting auditors in Italy, said existing rules were “robust and well-structured” and stressed that the job of the audits is not to root out crime.
Sitting at the top of the system of voluntary controls is the Industry Aerospace Quality Group, a global body.
IAQG President Eric Jefferies said in a statement to Reuters that it is actively working on updates to existing standards.
“However, the outcomes of any quality management system implementation ultimately rest with the certified organization,” he said.
(Reporting by Francesca Landini and Tim Hepher; Additional reporting by Giulia Segreti; Editing by Lisa Jucca)
