Originally Posted by
Cyclic Hotline
Long-winded, childish rant removed
Haven't been in the business very long, have you, Cyclic? If you had, you'd know that for eons, probably dating back to the VS-300, helicopters have had their data plates swapped from one airframe to another. It is said there are/were more Bell 47's flying than ever rolled off Bell's assembly lines. Same-same for the UH-1 and 206 series, I would imagine.
Cyclic, there's a lot to unpack in your childish rant that devolved into some political gibberish. But let's try!
First, I never said that the FAA approved or permitted anything. As with all FAR's, they only tell you what you *cannot* do. It wasn't until 2015 that the FAA finally issued the Advisory Circular specifying that -now- you cannot swap a date plate from one aircraft to another. Until 2015 this practice was, as I noted, fairly common. It was not necessarily dangerous or illegal.
You, Cyclic, for some reason automatically assume that everyone is dishonest (as dishonest as you, perhaps?) and would put together an aircraft of unapproved, uncertified or unairworthy parts, assembled by unlicensed mechanics and signed-off by bogus (or perhaps dead) IA's. You and both I know that it has happened. And it's not right, obviously.
But as I stated and as you're aware, helicopters are a collection of many parts with finite life-limits. All such parts need to have Component Historical Record cards that document where they've been and how much time is on them. Suppose you had a helicopter that had been in an accident and the cabin was damaged beyond economical repair? (We'll assume here that the crash was noted in the aircraft logbook.) What would or should stop you from buying a servicable cab and then attaching to it the necessary airworthy parts from the old ship to make it a complete aircraft? Are you saying that when an aircraft crashes, *every* part on it becomes scrap? Again, that's nonsense. As long as the appropritate inspections and repairs are carried out and documented, parts from crashed aircraft can certainly go back in service. Traceability is the key. As long as all the parts are yellow-tagged (serviceable) they can be installed on any aircraft. And finally, as long as the repaired/rebuilt aircraft conforms to its Type Certificate and is certified to that fact by an A&P/IA, then it's good to go. No?
By the way, the guy I worked for (the origin of my SN) did not do any dataplate swapping of any FH1100's. He didn't have to - he owned the Type Certificate. But we did occasionaly see customer aircraft come in that were "hybrids" that had obviously started life as a different serial number airframe. See, Hiller in their wisdom hid other datatags on their airframes and *we* knew where they were! (Back in the 1980's there was a guy down in central Florida who was infamous for building and selling bogus FH1100's, but he did eventually go to jail.)
Point being, "building an aircraft around a data plate" was once common practice with certain types. And it was not immoral or inherently unsafe. But it is prohibited now. I know a guy who, long prior to 2015 bought an old two-seat fixed-wing taildragger from the 1940's that had been crashed - not bad, just tripped up on its nose on landing. My friend did a beautiful rebuild/restoration on it - literallly from the rivets out. Lots of money spent. When he went to re-register it, he discovered that the previous owner had listed it as "Destroyed" and the FAA said, "Nope!" Oopsie! The road back from "Destroyed" is damn near impossible. My friend currently has an interesting piece of (expensive) lawn art. In the past, he would have simply bought the data plate off of a same-model wreck that had not been listed as "Destroyed" and slapped that data plate on his rebuilt airframe. Who would've known and what would it have mattered?
Rebuilding aircraft that have been wrecked is a business that some people have specialized in for many years. As long as everything is properly documented, and airworthy, traceable parts are used, there's usually nothing wrong with it. However there are some "shady" characters out there and sadly, not every aircraft buyer does his due-diligence.