However, the FTDI debacle didn't punish those people, they're not the consumers. It punished end users who have no idea what an FTDI chip is or does or that one exists in the products they buy.
In your airliner microcontroller example, you have much more informed consumers. They could reasonably be expected to know what processor is in their hardware, and to want to validate it. That's not the same.
It would be more like a good packaging manufacturer finding that their packaging was being counterfeited and their proprietary plastic blend was somehow being leaked up the supply chain. If they changed their recipe to something toxic, but using good plastic internally, and when people started dying said "they should have bought potato chips packaged in genuine FoodSafeStuff bags". People don't know what their packaging is made from or who it's made by. They have no way to verify it prior to purchase, and even after purchase, it would take an expert to identify. And there's no customer loyalty based on the plastic bag, after the food manufacturer switches away from the counterfeit they won't be significantly harmed. But everyone who innocently bought those bags and got poisoned suffered real harm.
