Shamed Into Compliance, KSQA Finally Alerts Clients of Suspension

As reported here, the AS9100 certification body K&S Quality Assessments (KSQA) was suspended twice, and never alerted clients or applicants as required by AS9104/1. The latest suspension is still in effect, and the KSQA website had been shut down for over a week, leaving many to assume they went out of business entirely.

Not so, as KSQA has finally sent an email alerting people to their suspension, prompted by the Oxebridge reporting. The full email appears below.

The email appears all-very-professional, and even quotes AS9104/1 verbatim in what I am guessing is an attempt to make Oxebridge look bad. Good luck with that. Predictably, they are cherry-picking and leaving out all the other parts of AS9104.1 that they violated, like not alerting clients and applicants when the suspensions occurred.

Remember, this is the second time this has happened. KSQA was suspended in August of 2025 and never notified clients or applicants. They only did it this time because of the online pressure. In both cases, IAS helped cover this up by not publishing information about KSQA’s suspensions, in violation of ISO 17011. The other day, IAS claimed the problem was that they just “forgot,” but it’s been a few days now, and IAS still has not published anything.

As usual, we cannot count on the accreditation bodies to do their job, so Oxebridge has to do it for them. You’re welcome, every person who flies on an airplane anywhere in the world, ever.

The email also claims — as IAS had, too — that the clients are fully protected and still fully certified. That may be true, but that is not what shows up in OASIS. And OASIS is what is used by aerospace primes to verify certificates. Here is one listing of an Oxebridge client as it appears right now, on 9 February 2026. To reiterate, this is the view of the client’s listing, not KSQA’s… showing the client as suspended.

This may be another of OASIS’ endless glitches and bad code problems, but it’s moot. If KSQA had never been suspended in the first place, none of the clients would be listed as “suspended” — incorrectly or not. That only happens when you fuck around.

The most nefarious part of this — at least that we know about — is that Norlander falsified audit reports. For three years straight, he conducted 100% remote AS9100 audits of a client in Australia. Kindergarten kids will remember that California — where Norlander lives — is not within driving distance of Australia. But in OASIS, Norlander indicated “NO” ICT was used, referring to remote auditing methods. He then marked all audits as having been done “onsite.”

That’s not allowed.

Now, “onsite” auditing doesn’t always mean it wasn’t remote. If the auditor is dialing in remotely, but the client is onsite, then it can technically be called an “onsite” audit. It’s just an onsite audit using ICT (“information and computer technology”.) But the use of ICT must be declared and justified in the audit plan. And you certainly can’t say you didn’t use ICT when you did.

But for AS9100 in manufacturing companies, it’s moot: you cannot do 100% ICT-based audits at all, and certainly not for an entire three-year audit cycle. Otherwise, airplane manufacturers would never see a single auditor walking the plant floor.

KSQA’s accreditation body, IAS, never found any of this in its annual office audits of KSQA. Worse, it is choosing to do nothing about it, even after being told about the problems. This puts IAS in the mix, as the two companies appear to be conspiring to commit fraud within the aerospace industry.

And, despite being alerted, IAS still has not updated its website to announce KSQA’s suspension, as required by AS9104/1 and ISO 17011.

Under Chuck Ramani, the IAS was largely a respectable, honest dealer. When he retired, and IAS was taken over by Raj Nathan, everything went downhill. Nathan leaned into the worst tendencies of scammer culture to turn IAS into an international joke. But he sucks up to the IAF, and they give him a free pass for IAS’s endless scammery. Still, at half the price of ANAB, it is hard to justify paying double for ANAB’s own brand of corruption.

Meanwhile, some of KSQA clients are scrambling to transfer to new CBs.

If you have been affected by the KSQA debacle, or even the refusal by IAS to comply with its obligations, you may want to send a note my way. We are exploring a class action suit against both bodies for their attempts to hide the suspension and other violations. We cannot hope that the industry overseers like IAQG, APAC, IAF, or anyone else will start doing their job and uphold accreditation rules, so we may have to let the courts finally decide this stuff. Let me know if you want to join the class.