Suspected Unapproved Parts Notification

The information collected on the FAA Form 8120-11 is reported voluntarily by manufacturers, repair stations, aircraft owner/operators, air carriers, and the general public who wish to report or disclose a suspected unapproved parts (SUP) to the FAA for review. The reported information is collected and correlated by the FAA, Aviation Safety Hotline Program Office, and used to determine if an unapproved part investigation is warranted. FAA employees and Department of Transportation (Office of Inspector General) receive information on these cases when assigned for investigation. Since submittal is voluntary, the frequency for those wishing to report a SUP occurrence is on occasion. When unapproved parts are confirmed that are likely to exist on other products or aircraft of the same or similar design or are being used in other facilities, the information is used as a basis for an aviation industry alert or notification. Alerts are used to inform industry of situations essential to the prevention of accidents, if the information had not been collected. The consequence to the aviation community would be the inability to determine whether or not unapproved parts are being offered for sale or use for installation on type-certificated products. Procedures and processes relating to the SUP program and associated reports are found in FAA Order 8120.16A, Suspected Unapproved Parts Program, and AC 21-29, Detecting and Reporting Suspected Unapproved Parts. When unapproved parts are identified, the FAA notifies the public by published Field Notifications (FN), disseminated using Unapproved Parts Notifications (UPN), Aviation Maintenance Alerts, Airworthiness Directives (AD), entry into an issue of the Service Difficulty Reporting Summary, a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin, a display on an Internet site, or direct mailing.

The latest form for Suspected Unapproved Parts Notification expires 2022-11-30 and can be found here.