Falsified aircraft parts paperwork: the AOG Technics case and what changed

Between 2019 and 2023, a small UK parts trader sold tens of thousands of jet engine parts with release certificates that no approved organisation had ever issued. The case, AOG Technics, ended in a prison sentence in February 2026, and it has already changed how the industry talks about paperwork: the response its own coalition recommended is to make release certificates digital and cryptographically verifiable.

What happened

According to the UK Serious Fraud Office, the case began when "an airline contacted Safran to check the authenticity of an AOG part." Safran identified the certificate as a fake and alerted the authorities.¹ The industry coalition formed afterwards describes the starting point in more detail: in June 2023 an operator at TAP Air Portugal queried CFM56 engine parts that "appeared older than represented in the documentation."⁷

Regulators moved within weeks. On 4 August 2023 the UK Civil Aviation Authority issued Safety Notice SN-2023/004, stating that engine parts "have been supplied to maintainers with false (ARCs) airworthiness release certificates (Both EASA Form 1 and FAA 8130)" and that some had been "confirmed on engines which have been fitted to UK registered aircraft."³ EASA published a suspected-unapproved-parts notice the same day: the approved organisation named on the certificates attested that "the form did not originate from within their organisation," and affected parts were to be quarantined.⁴ In September 2023 the FAA issued an Unapproved Parts Notification covering GE CF6 bushings whose FAA Forms 8130-3 it found to be falsified.⁵

The scale, in the prosecutor's figures

The SFO states that from January 2019 to July 2023, AOG Technics "sold over 60,000 aircraft engine parts worth £6.9 million accompanied by forged Authorised Release Certificates," and puts the estimated loss to airlines including American Airlines and Ethiopian Airlines at over £39.3 million.¹

The company's director was charged with fraudulent trading in May 2025, pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court on 1 December 2025, and on 23 February 2026 was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison. The SFO lists the case as closed, with its proceeds-of-crime case continuing.²

Why a forged form worked

An authorised release certificate (FAA Form 8130-3, EASA Form 1) is the document that says a part conforms to approved design data and is in a condition for safe operation. It does not travel with any way of proving who issued it beyond the paper itself. The FAA's guidance on suspected unapproved parts lists "incomplete or altered paperwork" among the warning signs, and defines unapproved parts to include those "intentionally misrepresented, including counterfeit parts."⁹ In other words, the system relied on people spotting a bad document. In this case it took an alert operator and a call to the manufacturer.

What the industry recommended

In February 2024, GE Aerospace led the formation of the Aviation Supply Chain Integrity Coalition, co-chaired by former NTSB Chairman Robert L. Sumwalt and former Deputy Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari, with Airbus, American Airlines, Boeing, Delta, GE Aerospace, Safran, StandardAero and United as founding members.⁶ Its report, published in October 2024, makes 13 recommendations across vendor accreditation, document traceability and verification, and non-serialised parts traceability.⁷

On documents, the recommendations include:

• adopting digital authorised release certificates "in as many functions as possible," with cryptographic hashing to verify document data and digital signatures;⁷
• an industry-standard format for documentation, and digitising past documents;
• a database to verify key release-certificate fields; and
• a voluntary industry database of back-to-birth parts documentation.

The coalition also notes that the FAA has allowed electronic 8130-3s since 2009, yet adoption "remains slow."⁷ Its September 2025 progress survey reported that 70% of respondents had taken action to move toward digital release certificates.⁸

In Washington, H.R. 6267, the Aviation Supply Chain Safety and Security Digitization Act of 2025, passed the House on 24 March 2026. It does not mandate digital certificates; it directs the Comptroller General to study "the impediments to the use of digital documentation and verification in the aviation supply chain," including digital 8130-3s and the move from physical to digital signatures.¹⁰ The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 contains no parts-traceability provision.

What a digital signature would and would not have changed

A release certificate signed with the issuing organisation's private key cannot be produced by someone who does not hold that key. Had the certificates in this case been signed that way, and checked against the real issuer's public key, a fabricated certificate would have failed verification at receiving inspection rather than months later.

Two limits matter. First, a signature proves who issued a document and that it has not changed since; it does not prove the part on the bench is the part the document describes. Physical inspection and back-to-birth history still do that work. Second, the signature has to stay trustworthy for as long as the record does. Release certificates and life-limited part histories are relied on for decades, and the RSA and elliptic-curve signatures most systems use today are the ones standards bodies are already scheduling for retirement because of quantum computing. That is the gap post-quantum signatures are meant to close.

Key points

• AOG Technics sold over 60,000 parts with forged release certificates between 2019 and 2023 (SFO).
• Its director pleaded guilty to fraudulent trading and was sentenced to 4 years 8 months on 23 February 2026.
• The industry coalition's answer is digital, cryptographically verifiable release certificates and back-to-birth records.
• Signatures prove origin and integrity, not physical conformity, and they must outlast the record they protect.