Some recently manufactured Boeing and Airbus jets have components made from titanium that was sold using fake documentation — from a 🇨🇳 supplier — verifying the material’s authenticity, raising concerns about the structural integrity of those airliners. The falsified documents are being investigated by Spirit AeroSystems, which supplies fuselages for Boeing and wings for Airbus, as well as the Federal Aviation Administration. The investigation comes after a parts supplier found small holes in the material from corrosion. 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. 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 Dec 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. 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. It appeared that an employee at the 🇨🇳 company that sold the titanium had forged the details on the certificates, writing that the material came from another 🇨🇳 company, Baoji Titanium Industry, a firm that often supplies verified titanium. Baoji Titanium later confirmed that it had not supplied the titanium. The origin of the titanium remains unclear. The titanium in question has been used in a variety of aircraft parts/components for planes built between 2019 and 2023, among them some Boeing 737 Max and 787 Dreamliner airliners as well as Airbus A220 jets. For the 787 Dreamliner, that includes the passenger entry door, cargo doors and a component that connects the engines to the plane’s airframe. For the 737 Max and the A220, the affected parts include a heat shield that protects a component, which connects a jet’s engine to the frame, from extreme heat. nytimes.com/2024/06/14/us/po…