Narrative:

This is mainly a safety report concerning our maintenance. This occurred after both radios failed coming into ZZZ. ATC was great working with us through our bad radio reception and sometimes failure and eventually both radios were out simultaneously; that occurred two times. We eventually made enough communication to continue flying the STAR until the end; then to the FAF. We landed and one radio had been working since 'clearance to land'. We continued to taxi to the gate with no more problems. Just a little more background; during the last no radio period; we transmitted in the blind; and squaked 7600 about 30 seconds later. My first officer (first officer) was trying everything imaginable to re-establish communications; eventually getting the tower about 20 miles out. I wrote up the two intermittently failing radios and maintenance came out and re-racked the radios and signed them off - ops check good. I wasn't too comfortable with that. My first officer immediately began testing the radios. Number one seemed to work fine; but remember it worked fine while taxiing for those few minutes anyway. Number 2 didn't work even though we did a total of 9 radio checks. I wrote up number two again saying inoperative.at this point I was on the phone with maintenance and he said we were good to go anyway; since we could MEL number 2. I said; 'this only leaves us one radio and it was one of the two that had both just failed us several times in flight.' maintenance says; 'you are still legal.' I reminded him of what just happened and said; 'I really don't think this is smart to go fly a plane with passengers at night with mountains around with only one radio that had just failed me badly on the last flight. I think a dispatcher may have said something similar based on what he was told; but I did eventually talk to the director of operations. I told the director; I wanted another aircraft and he said there were none available; not even to swap. I held my ground. He put me on hold. About two to three minutes later he said something like; a swap just became available. We eventually took the other plane.my whole reasoning here is to bring light to some of the things we see with mels and maintenance decisions/actions. Overall I think our maintenance guys are good to work with; but sometimes they might get stuck on getting flights out; which can overlook a safety concern. I don't know if it is pressure on them or not; I don't know; but this was a real concern to me that I had to almost battle to get a safe airplane.the regulations want us to fly with 2 radios; unless one is written up and there is a limited time to repair it (but normally the good radio has no history). But in this case they wanted to send us out knowing one radio is inoperative and the other had just failed badly. This would be an emergency waiting to happen. It was a safety issue.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: CRJ-900 Captain reported that due questionable radio reliability the aircraft was not accepted and refused.

Narrative: This is mainly a safety report concerning our maintenance. This occurred after both radios failed coming into ZZZ. ATC was great working with us through our bad radio reception and sometimes failure and eventually both radios were out simultaneously; that occurred two times. We eventually made enough communication to continue flying the STAR until the end; then to the FAF. We landed and one radio had been working since 'clearance to land'. We continued to taxi to the gate with no more problems. Just a little more background; during the last no radio period; we transmitted in the blind; and squaked 7600 about 30 seconds later. My First Officer (FO) was trying everything imaginable to re-establish communications; eventually getting the tower about 20 miles out. I wrote up the two intermittently failing radios and Maintenance came out and re-racked the radios and signed them off - ops check good. I wasn't too comfortable with that. My FO immediately began testing the radios. Number one seemed to work fine; but remember it worked fine while taxiing for those few minutes anyway. Number 2 didn't work even though we did a total of 9 radio checks. I wrote up number two again saying INOP.At this point I was on the phone with Maintenance and he said we were good to go anyway; since we could MEL number 2. I said; 'This only leaves us one radio and it was one of the two that had both just failed us several times in flight.' Maintenance says; 'you are still legal.' I reminded him of what just happened and said; 'I really don't think this is smart to go fly a plane with passengers at night with mountains around with only one radio that had just failed me badly on the last flight. I think a dispatcher may have said something similar based on what he was told; but I did eventually talk to the director of Operations. I told the director; I wanted another aircraft and he said there were none available; not even to swap. I held my ground. He put me on hold. About two to three minutes later he said something like; a swap just became available. We eventually took the other plane.My whole reasoning here is to bring light to some of the things we see with MELs and Maintenance decisions/actions. Overall I think our Maintenance guys are good to work with; but sometimes they might get stuck on getting flights out; which can overlook a safety concern. I don't know if it is pressure on them or not; I don't know; but this was a real concern to me that I had to almost battle to get a safe airplane.The regulations want us to fly with 2 radios; unless one is written up and there is a limited time to repair it (but normally the good radio has no history). But in this case they wanted to send us out knowing one radio is inoperative and the other had just failed badly. This would be an emergency waiting to happen. It was a safety issue.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.