New Embraers With Used/Faulty PartsWatched a program about the crash of an Embraer Legacy the other night. That's the one where a newly purchased Legacy was on its way across Brazil - headed back to the US when its wing tip sliced through a 737 headed in the other direction killing 150 passengers aboard the larger aircraft.
This event had a lot of interesting considerations which came out in the investigation but one aspect of it that registered with me was the idea that this newly purchased Legacy had been fitted with a used transponder from another aircraft. One where it had already experienced problems.
Now a transponder is something which alerts other aircraft to the presence of each aircraft, but this particular transponder had come from another aircraft where it apparently had malfunctioned but was thought to be repaired...
I don't know about you, but if I paid good money to purchase a new vehicle only to find out later that it had used parts I wouldn't be too happy with the manufacturer.
I don't know how widespread this kind of thing might be in the industry although I've heard its a more common practise with the repair of older aircraft than the airlines and most of the flying public would probably like to admit.