MEL Waivers on Smoky Airbus Standby RMI's??

[UNCTUOUS]

I am told by a usually reliable chum in Europe that for the past 9 months the standby RMIs (may be a digital RMI) on

ALL Airbus aircraft have been disconnected due to repeat instances of arcing and smoke. That's A319 through A340.

Supposedly as this is an MEL item, Lufthansa was given a waiver by the German FAA (Flugfukenwerk or something like that) for 6

months. Airbus is having trouble delivering better instruments supposedly.


This is admittedly a bit light on specifics. I have trolled for ADs. Has anyone picked up on anything about this?.

I don't really understand how they could be flying on any such MEL dispensation. Is there such a thing as a continuous MEL waiver under JAR's?

[spannersatcx]

Airworthiness directive /DGA T2002-151 (B) mandates A330/340 operators to de-activate the DDRMI.

:)

[UNCTUOUS]

Thanks Spanners

Turned up the non-FAA version of that AD at this link here (http://www.slv.dk/Publikationer/Love/AIC_C_checklist/AIC%20C/LDD_LISTE_18_APR_2002/LDD%202002-106-452(FS).pdf)

BUT (from the English Section)

How could Airbus go ahead and approve an MMEL dispensation/waiver for non-carriage of a standby flight instrument for six months when it's normally a no-go item for even a single flight?

Surely that makes a joke of the whole MEL system?

And I believe that this problem affects the whole Airbus fleet of A319 through A340.

What am I missing here?

Why is the FAA and CAA and ATSB not addressing this?

[AhhhVC813]

I'm not sure about waivers, but the DDRMI, is not considered a standby instrument and is presumably, therefore, not considered critical. PFD 1 (run by DMC 1) takes heading information from ADIRU 1 and all are powered in the event of total electrical failure by essential busses which take their supply from the batteries or emergency generator. I guess the ultimate (??) steering device is the standby compass which is required under the MEL.

[idg]

We fly both 330s and 320/1s. All the 330s have their DDRMIs deactivated and initially one of the old 321s. The narrowbody fleet applicability depends of which type of instrument fitted. The problem ones as I understand it, only display VOR info whereas ours are switchable between NDB and VOR and are apparently OK.

There have been complaints to AI about this very problem recently and questioning the lack of a fix. Indeed the question has been raised as to why the offending instrument was fitted in the first place and couldn't it be de-activated permanently!

AI's response was that there is no paperwork or legislation to allow this deactivation to take place, but that since there are limitations in the MEL about what else has to be serviceable in the case of a u/s DDRMI then it's OK!! Our MEL has time limitations for each malfunction and one of these is indeed a nil entry thereby specifying no time limit. Cannot remember what the limit is for the DDRMI, but I do know that a special page had to be generated for this problem!

As I understand it the problem lies with an electrical transformer that was overheating.....why such a long time to fix?:rolleyes:

[Max Angle]

Just had a notice from the company saying that the mod. program will start in July 03' and should take 3 months to complete for all 20 a/c affected. Only our newest a/c, recently delivered, has the DDRMI active at present.

[SLT]

One by-product of this bulletin is that dispatch with ND1 inoperative is now prohibited if the approach at the destination is based on non-precision aids. This is due to the fact that if you lost ND1+2 in certain electrical failure situations, you have no way of flying an instrument approach.

[UNCTUOUS]

Lots of Good Info but.........


Is it actually an MEL item that you normally couldn't go flying without (but that has been waivered by Airbus because they can't replace them in the short or medium term)?

Or is it NOT (i.e. was never) one of those?

Color me confused.

UNC