Tue, Mar 02, 2004
Officials: There May Be A Link With Last Year's Queens
Crash
Police in Italy have
seized thousands of aircraft parts in connection with an
investigation into the suspected fraudulent sale of used equipment
to airlines. The raid, by 150 police officers on a warehouse
belonging to Panaviation -- a company which deals in airplane parts
-- at Rome's Fiumicino airport on Saturday, follows a similar
seizure on Friday when police raided a ship in Naples.
Investigators say they believe the parts are sold with false
documentation as new, or at least as properly inspected, when they
were actually stripped from redundant planes by unqualified people.
Police are looking at possible links with two plane crashes - one
in the New York suburb of Queens, which killed 265 people last
November, and another near Genoa airport in 1999 in which four
died. The FBI is helping them with their inquiries.
Three Rome-based brokerage companies - Panaviation, New Tech
Italia and New Tech Aerospace - are suspected of illegally selling
reconditioned aircraft parts to major Italian airlines, including
Alitalia, Minerva and Meridiana as well as to European and US
airlines. Police seized two shipping containers from Fiumcino
containing parts from six Airbus A300s that were no longer fit to
fly. In the port of Naples on Friday three containers holding three
tons of parts from planes due to be scrapped were also uncovered.
Police believe they were about to be shipped to the United
States.
Six people have already been arrested and another four are under
investigation in connection with the scam, according to the Rome
daily Il Messaggero. The investigation began after a 1995 robbery
in an airplane hangar in Olbia, the paper said. Investigations into
the Queens crash have been focusing on the possibility that engine
or rudder failure caused the disaster. The crash of a Minerva
airlines jet in Genoa has been blamed on the pilot, who was charged
with malpractice, although he maintained there were problems with
the brakes. Italy's Air Safety Authority said the results of the
probe would have ramifications for the entire industry. "It will
shake the whole aviation world," said its spokesman, Adalberto
Pellegrino.
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