An old industry joke says that an aircraft is “a set of parts flying in formation”.

Parts and spares are, indeed, essential for any complex machine to work properly and this is precisely the area of expertise of this episode’s guest.

Alex Duran is the co-founder, together with Jasin Colar, of Nexspares, a consultancy firm based in Zürich, Switzerland, that helps airlines the world over source their parts and spares in the most efficient way possible.

We had a chance to talk about this area of the commercial aviation business, how airlines source parts when they need them, what sort of procedures are there in place to guarantee safety and prevent counterfeiting and, more generally, how aircraft parts and spares are traded in the global market.